could lose business after the trust of prestigious clients in the voice of irritation down

took her BlackBerry with her when she went to help the Brownies in his native town in Devon on Tuesday night, she hoped to obtain confirmation from a customer for its translation services freelance. No meat the message - but when it was she returned home a message on the computer saying:

"Because you did not answer, we had to give work to someone one else. "

300 pounds of work ("particularly disappointing because they were a new customer"), but is only one of tens of millions in the world are feeling the effects of a dramatic failure of computer to the UK headquarters of Research In Motion (RIM) in Slough, Berkshire, this week.

The crash means that, at times, emails and messages can not be sent or received. Web browsing is also intermittent.

consumers were not the only ones concerned: for the thousands of bankers across Europe awaiting the latest news on the euro, have not had a golden silence. Their BlackBerry were sometimes not relaying messages.

worked in Slough, from 11:00 on Monday to try to restore service after-the equivalent of a "moment of Chernobyl" -. or experience with a critical system goes terribly wrong

For the Russian nuclear reactor that it was an after-hours test ripped the roof when the building and STIs Exposed radioactive nucleus; for RIM, the Guardian understands, it was a failed attempt to upgrade the hardware and software that encrypts messages, e-mail and Web traffic for users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, and are now exposed which requires furious that RIM to get it together act STI - or see it in the desert, customers only had areas where growth.

But the attempts to solve the problem seems to be worse. At noon on Wednesday disturbances had spread to North America - including Canada, where Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis founded RIM in 1984. They are now leaders co-chairs and co-Eleven for a company that challenged the leader in the Nokia smartphone. But you've seen recently that he shares his, revenue and profits all fall like Apple and phones using Google's Android software took over, and the bosses are twins under the threat of shareholders.

As for the failure, "the thing is really worrying that we do not know how long it will take," said one dealing with companies in RIM. "They say tomorrow morning - but by saying they were yesterday." The timing is inconvenient for RIM Because it comes in the week Apple releases a major upgrade of the software IST mobile phone, which provides a capability called "IMessage" to compete with RIM's BlackBerry Messenger directly.

The danger is that RIM's reputation - between young consumers and companies that connected each make up about half the 70 million users worldwide IST -. Can also be permanently damaged

"For large companies this can be crippling if they have their people based on BlackBerry for email," said Carolina Milanesi, analyst at research firm Gartner smartphones - which says she is stressed she is not traveling that Thursday ". It is company policy to use, we have a BlackBerry for email, I'd be scrambling to get to a wireless connection so I can use my iPhone. "

Milanesi thinks big companies Their review of options, such as the Apple iPhone have begun making inroads including that used in the RIM fee business. The tens of millions of users rely on this revelation a unique business in Slough could have their dependence on it to reconsider.

Message encryption and a private system of RIM, international roaming, which costs avoided had both BlackBerry very attractive to businesses and consumers. But Wednesday as users and Alastair Campbell cricketer, Kevin Pietersen has expressed his anger over the delay. Campbell criticized the silence of RIM, and inadvertently invented a new word. "Day 3 of blackberry blackout" I tweeted. "Some free advice. Explain when you fix it. Apologise When you. Reward after. Woefuk handling so far." (I later added: ". Was indeed Woefuk type error if it catches, I'll ask .")

Pietersen threatened to change phone -. Considering a move many say they were

just what you said to explain the problem, issuing brief statements to Stephen Bates, ITS UK and Ireland CEO, a group of developers Wednesday morning Told "We thought we had found the problem [that caused the crash], but did not. We work hard to get to the bottom of the problem."

He added: ".. We are working around the clock to resolve the failure Apologies to all our customers' delays, I said," are not acceptable "and" server problems are viewed with a high attention ". RIM, I said, "will not stop until they reach the end of the problem."

Lord sugar
, who noted that I have created one of the first really big business PC British, was infuriated by the outage. "In all my years in the computer biz, I've never seen a failure by the Blackberry experience. I do not understand why it is so long to fix. "