Mike Lazaridis, the founder and co-CEO of Research in Motion announced on Thursday that the BlackBerry service has been fully restored.

“All of the services are back up globally,” he said.

The announcement was made during a conference call on Thursday and came just hours after a downbeat video message – itself a rare appearance from Mike Lazaridis – appeared to say the exact opposite.

“I’d like to give you an estimated time of full recovery around the world, but I cannot do this with certainty at this time,” Mike Lazaridis said.

“For those of you affected I know this is very frustrating. We’re doing everything in our power to restore regular service levels and we’re working tirelessly to restore your trust in us.”

“I apologize for the outages this week. We’ve let many of you down.”

Research in Motion announced that the BlackBerry service has been fully restored today

Mike Lazaridis went on to say that service levels had been restored in many territories. His comments were mirrored by users around the world, as many reported today that emails were now working, and that BlackBerry Messenger was back online.

It was reported that users are now demanding compensation for three days cut off from BlackBerry services.

But, Research in Motion (RIM) – the company behind BlackBerry- has made no comment as to whether it might offer compensation to users.

RIM has faced widespread criticism for its handling of the crisis, in particular its infrequent communications with customers.

BlackBerry shares are still down on today’s trading.

RIM’s revenues have been in rapid decline from their $5.6 billion peak since February, when its shares were worth $70 a piece. They are now trading at just under $25. The company has lost nearly two thirds of its value in eight months.

Profits collapsed over the summer as RIM failed to produce new models, saw its tablet computer flop and generally lost out to the iPhone and Android mobiles.

Apologizing for interruptions and delays, RIM’s chief information officer Robin Bienfait said on the company’s website:

“You’ve depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we’re letting you down.

“We believe we understand why this happened and we are working to restore normal service levels in all markets as quickly as we can.”

In a later posting, RIM insisted there was “a significant increase in service levels” in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, and that service was “progressing well” in the US, Canada and Latin America, despite some continued delays.

It remains unclear how many of the 70 million BlackBerry subscribers have been affected by the outage, but many have vented their frustrations on Twitter.

BlackBerry outage started at around 11:00 a.m. on Monday.