This one set off alarms for me!

RIM offers explanation for massive Blackberry outage

YIKES!!!!

RIM's service is centralized and works by routing all BlackBerry e-mails through one of two main Network Operations Centers, which are essentially large data centers. One NOC is located in Canada and it primarily services the Western Hemisphere as well as parts of Asia. The other data center, located in the U.K., handles e-mail traffic in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Analysts had speculated that since most of the users affected by the outage were based in North America that it was likely a problem occurred in the NOC located in Waterloo, Canada.

And emergency management officials rely on this as their all fails backup???