SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- The company that makes the ubiquitous, addictive BlackBerry smart phones said Tuesday it was still looking into what caused the second widespread service disruption in less than a year.

Research in Motion Ltd. said customers in the United States and Canada "experienced intermittent delays" for about three hours Monday beginning about 3:30 p.m. EST. RIM said no messages were lost, and voice and text messaging services were unaffected.

"It is too early to determine root cause at this time, but RIM does have a team addressing this issue in order to define the problem and prevent it in the future," the company said in a statement.

The BlackBerry service, which lets users check e-mail and access other data, has become a lifeline for many business executives and is increasingly popular among consumers with smart phones like the BlackBerry Pearl.

Outages have been rare in the BlackBerry's nine-year history, but when they do hit, subscribers who have become addicted to the gadgets are quick to unleash their fury.

"I'm mad - it's enough already," said a frustrated Stuart Gold, who said he gets 1,000 e-mails a day as director of field marketing for Web analytics company Omniture (OMTR).

Gold, who worked most of Monday on a laptop while traveling, plans to ask his company to buy him a backup smart phone from a rival like Palm, which makes the Treo, in case BlackBerry service goes on the blink again.

"I don't know what happened, I don't care what happened. They need to save their excuses for someone who cares," Gold said.

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