BlackBerry services restored to all RIM customers after four days of frustration

BlackBerry services have been fully restored to all customers according to Research in Motion (RIM) founder Mike Lazardis.

He confirmed that the issue was caused by a switch failure that brought down a server at its Slough facility and that the interrupted service in Europe had created a backlog of messages that caused services to slow or fail around the globe.

He said any problems customers may still be experiencing are due to a continued backlog of service, or to phones losing synchronisation with RIM's network, in which case customers should remove then reinsert their batteries.

Lazardis denied rumours that mobile carriers have presented RIM with a bill for the problems that customers experienced, claiming all of RIM's partners have been supportive in helping restore the system.

"The carriers understand the complexity of the system. When this happens, everyone pulls together," he said.

He also gave his reassurances to customers that that the firm has been completely focused on restoring the system all week and revealed that no one in the network operations team had been home since Monday.

Lazardis denied that cuts of 2000 employees from its workforce had exacerbated the problem.

"The network operations team is highly skilled and the layoffs did not affect them," he claimed.

Lazardis also confirmed the company will perform a root cause analysis on the switch failure and said it does not yet know which network supplier is to blame for the switch failure.

He added that RIM will now turn its attentions to how it can compensate customers for the outages which have lasted almost four days.

"We worked 12 years to win trust of 70 million BlackBerry subscribers and we will work to win their trust back," he said.

Lazardis' comments this afternoon follow a video apology he made to customers as the firm struggled to appease millions of angry users.