RIM says BlackBerry service fully restored 2011, BlackBerry, service, getting

tiffiant

RIM says BlackBerry service fully restored
Outage began in Canada on Monday
News1130 Staff Oct 13, 2011 06:47:13 AM
0 Update 7:18 a.m.: Research in Motion says BlackBerry service has been fully restored.

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Problems with the BlackBerry persist today, as some messages are still not getting through.

Research In Motion says it's working around the clock to clear backlogged email messages stuck in its system after the largest BlackBerry outage ever.

The widespread outage in Canada and the US started Monday. Users were without email, texting, and BBM (Blackberry messaging) -- sparking a flurry of complaints on Twitter. In Vancouver, #blackberry was trending today, for the second day in a row. Some tweets include:

Dear Blackberry, do you know what the #iPhone said to the #Blackberry? ... "iWork"

Dear #Blackberry thank you for honouring Steve Jobs with a 3 day silence

The BlackBerry outage — the biggest in the company's history — even reached Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office. Andrew MacDougall, spokesman for the prime minister, took to social networking site Twitter yesterday and tweeted: "Am being impacted by RIM/Berry service outage — please call if you need to reach me."

RIM says a "core switch failure" in Europe caused the global service outages and the original outage caused a backlog of messages, which then spread around the world. CTO for software for RIM, David Yach, adds there were backup systems in place but they failed to kick in.

"It's a huge embarrassment for a company that has built its reputation on the notion of service and reliability and when all else fails your BlackBerry will still work," says Michael Gartenberg, director of research at US-based technology firm Gartner Inc.

He adds the outage comes at a key time for the company. "It's coming at a time when RIM is facing increasing competition from companies like Google and Apple and Microsoft, all launching new products."

RIM has been losing ground in the hyper-competitive North American market to Apple and Android devices in recent years. Although it's still a leader in the business market, Apple has been making inroads with corporations.

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Apple's new iPhone 4S, announced last week, is set to hit stores Friday.

But Duncan Stewart, director of research at Deloitte Canada tells us although the outage is annoying, it is not necessarily a major black eye for RIM. "It's much easier to write a story about another thing going wrong with BlackBerry. That doesn't mean their outages are more severe or worse than other carriers."

The same outage hit Europe, the Middle East, parts of Asia, and South America over the long weekend.


David Yach, RIM's chief technology officer notes the problem isn't related to a security breach. "All of the email will be delivered. We will not be dropping any email messages."
"Our priority is to get the service up and running because at the end of the day that's what's going to make our customers happy is to have their BlackBerrys working again," he adds.

RIM also apologized.

In a letter posted yesterday on RIM's website Robin Bienfait, RIM's chief information officer, apologized for service interruptions and delays.

"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."

However, an apology didn't seem to be good enough for the government of Colombia, which reportedly asked RIM to compensate users affected by the glitches.

Shares in Research In Motion closed down 87 cents, or 3.5 per cent, at $24.27 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

tiffiant

http://ca.blackberry.com/
http://www.rim.com/
http://www.news1130.com/search?A ... ublishDateTS%20DESC
http://twitter.com/#%21/News1130radio
http://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23blackberry
http://pm.gc.ca/eng/pm.asp
http://www.gartner.com/technology/home.jsp
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_CA/ca/index.htm
http://www.rim.com/newsroom/service-update.shtml

Nam

Yup... my bf has to go to Apple store to buy few iphone4 right the way for the executives because BB failed and executives freak out and want to make sure they do get emails when they are in London............