The Ontario-based company released a statement saying the crashes, which spread throughout Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East and Latin America, were caused by "a core switch failure within its infrastructure" and a failed back-up switch.
The company apologized for the "inconvenience" to the 70 million affected users, and said it is "working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible," but did not offer a time frame for restoration.
Over the past year, RIM has faced disappointing sales, second-quarter profit losses, and a downward spiral in the market. The company once dominated the mobile email service market, attracting major corporations because of their tightly secured programs.
But recently, as security features become more common, RIM's former clients have switched to other smartphones for their email functions as Apple and other phone makers gain ground in the enterprise sector.
The recent outages are further tarnishing RIM's reputation. BlackBerry Internet Service has failed before, but never for as long or on as large a scale. The frequency of outages has also increased, with widespread outages last year and a brief outage a few weeks ago. Particularly for businesses, three days of service interruptions is simply unacceptable.
RIM's sparse communication with its users regarding the issues hasn't helped matters. Users who were frustrated on Monday are furious today, venting on Twitter and Facebook, apparently from their desktops.
Some were able to find humor in the situation, jokingly asking "What did the one BBM user say to the other? Nothing."
Still, the outage is no laughing matter for RIM. With the holiday shopping season fast approaching and Apple's iPhone 4S release just two days away, the company must perform some type of damage control in order to avoid losing massive amounts of customers, particularly among its business clients.
Even once service is restored, memories of how the company dealt with its troubles could have harmful and lasting implications.
As Richard Windsor, a technology specialist for Nomura, said, "It's a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time."
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