BlackBerry crisis finally resolved

Officials from BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion said on Thursday their services have been fully restored, a development that couldn't come soon enough for Washington workers who rely heavily on the troubled handset company.

"I want to apologize to all the BlackBerry customers we have let down. Our inability to quickly fix this has been frustrating," co-CEO Mike Lazaridis told a news conference on Thursday.

RIM attributed the problems to a hardware breakdown on its overseas network that created a backlog that eventually interrupted data and voice services for U.S. customers as well as users in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa.

The service problems were a major frustration this week in Washington, where government agencies and departments rely on BlackBerry more than other phones because of its high security standards. Capitol Hill only began permitting non-BlackBerry phones this year.

But one of RIM's security advantages--its routing of communications traffic through its own networks--translated into havoc this week when the company struggled to fix a hardware breakdown.

A spokesman from the Chief Administrative Officer, which oversees communication for the House, said the office had not received complaints Thursday since RIM restored service.

The outages had many wondering whether the breakdown might be the result of a cyberattack, which RIM has ruled out.

An official from U.S. Cyber Command, which oversees cyberissues for the U.S. military networks, said the unit had "done its homework" to find out if the Defense Department networks were under attack and determined that wasn't the case.

"From all indications, the issue of BlackBerry service interruption is with the manufacturer.%C2%A0Although some governmental organizations may have experienced problems with their BlackBerry service, there has been no operational impact to [Defense] networks," a Cyber Command spokesman said.

Agencies and departments were frustrated by the interruption this week but soldiered on.

"It may been an inconvenience for some, but it doesn't affect the work of the State Department," said Noel Caly, a spokesman for the department. "If someone was inconvenienced they could pick up the telephone. I mean, what did we do before?"

A Federal Communications Commission spokesman said the agency is "pleased" service has been restored "for consumers and business that rely on their BlackBerrys for communication."

The BlackBerry outage was felt acutely by press secretaries, who had an excuse for ignoring the press this week.

"I guess this is a real government shutdown!" one said.