Research in Motion's (RIM) service outage is spreading. The three-day disruption, previously affecting BlackBerry subscribers in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, is now being reported in North and South America. RIM, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, released a statement saying "BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available." Reports are trickling in from new areas as the outage expands. "BlackBerry users in Canada have been cut off from their smartphone's messaging, e-mail and Internet services," the Canadian news site CP24 wrote.  NPR is also reporting staff members in North America are experiencing disruptions. Twitter users complained of similar issues. The outage began on Monday. Reports indicate that text messaging and Internet access are the areas hardest hit; subscribers can still place mobile calls. RIM appears to be getting to the root of the problem, saying "a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.” Source: CNN