BlackBerry users lost service for 3 hours

WATERLOO, Ontario, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Users of BlackBerry hand-held communications devices lost service for three hours Monday but the equipment's Canadian manufacturer is saying little about why.

Research in Motion issued a brief statement of apology Monday night from its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, northwest of Toronto, the Globe and Mail reported.

"BlackBerry data services in the Americas experienced intermittent delays on late Monday afternoon," the statement said. "No (e-mail) messages were lost and message queues began to be cleared after normal service levels were restored."

The outage began about 3:30 p.m. EST and returned after about three hours, the newspaper said.

Last April, some 12 million BlackBerry users worldwide lost service and RIM issued a statement saying the outage was caused by "the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine" that failed along with backup procedures.