BlackBerry‘s have been experiencing an outage of sorts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America for the past few days. Now, the trouble has started moving to users in the U.S. and Canada. The problems include questionable email service and no access to Internet browsing. The issues started at the beginning of this week and haven’t been improving
On Tuesday, RIM reported that the issue had been solved, only to report later that they were working on it. Unless solving it involves speading the issues to North American users, things aren’t looking good. RIM has released a statement explaining that:
The messaging and browsing delays … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service.
A widespread service outage wouldn’t bode well for any service provider, but it has got to sting a little extra for RIM. This isn’t the first time that there has been a BlackBerry service outage in North America. To boot, with the iPhone 4S, a huge competitor for everyone, but specifically the flailing, increasingly aimless BlackBerry, this outage could hardly come at a worse time, especially when more and more businesses are abandoning RIM’s proprietary, secure email for alternatives that let employees use phones like the iPhone for work. Lastly, RIM has yet to give any estimate of when the problem will be solved. Considering that course of action didn’t bode well for the PSN situation and that RIM has already gone back on an a “we fixed it” announcement, it’s hard to be optimistic.
(via Reuters)
- Remember the BlackBerry Playbook?
- And the dismal numbers, layoffs, and general failure?
- And that one articulate employee at RIM who doesn’t seem too confident?
