Users of the BlackBerry email-push service have found themselves disconnected and unable to send or receive messages because of a "critical infrastructure outage" which seems to be affecting people across the western hemisphere.

Problems have been reported in RIM's home country, Canada, as well as the USA. Calls to the BlackBerry customer help line in Vancouver were apparently receiving a recorded announcement:

"Please be advised that we are currently experiencing a service interruption that is causing delays in sending and receiving messages. We apologise for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available."

Calls to RIM's European office were fruitless, but UK network operators aren't reporting any problems with the service as yet, so it seems only companies using US-BlackBerry-hosted servers are affected. ®

Update

O2 have confirmed that their Blackberry service is completely unaffected; they've had no more luck than us contacting Blackberry but they do comment that the European servers are complete separate from those across the pond so shouldn't suffer from whatever is afflicting US users.

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