BlackBerry Network Outage Enters Third Day: 'Switching Failure' Leaves Millions Without BBM, Email

By Georgina Prodhan
LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of BlackBerry users around the world were left without text communication services for a third day on Wednesday as Research in Motion struggled to fix what it said was a switching failure in its private network.
Users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered patchy email service and no access to browsing and messaging, ratcheting up negative sentiment toward a company already losing market share to Apple and Samsung.
RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
"The messaging and browsing delays ... were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," it said. "As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service."
The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.
"It's a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time," said Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura.
"One possibility could be that it encourages client companies to look more at other options such as allowing users to connect their own devices to the corporate server and save themselves the cost of buying everyone a BlackBerry."
Many companies, no longer seeing the need to pay to be locked into RIM's secure proprietary email service, have already begun allowing employees to use alternative smartphones, particularly Apple's iPhone, for corporate mail.
RIM has made inroads into the youth market attracted by its free BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, partially compensating for its losses in the corporate market. But new products like its PlayBook tablet computer have been poorly received.
Following a dismal set of quarterly results and a plunge in its share price, some investors are now calling for a break-up, sale or change of management at the company.
Increasingly frustrated users tweeted their frustration on Wednesday, while RIM's own official Twitter feed was last updated on Tuesday night, saying problems were being resolved and it was sorry for the inconvenience.
Veteran British entrepreneur Alan Sugar, who founded electronics company Amstrad in 1968, tweeted: "In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such an outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can't understand why it's taking so long to fix."
Some customers used humor to deal with the situation. One joke making the rounds on Twitter said: "What did the one BBM user say to the other? Nothing."
(Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[jsarets]

12:36 PM on 10/12/2011

The BlackBerry product line reminds me of those desktop word processors that were popular office equipment in the 1980s.

When the desktop word processors arrived, they were clearly superior to the electric typewriters they were designed to replace. They had displays which allowed typists to edit documents on screen before printing them out on paper.

But fundamentally, they were early desktop computers which only ran one built-in application (the word processor). So when newer desktop computers such as the IBM PC and the Apple II became available, offering full-featured office software such as Lotus 1-2-3 and AppleWorks in addition to various other applications distributed on floppy disks, the standalone word processors became irrelevant dinosaurs from a bygone era.

The BlackBerry was an early smartphone which (besides being a mobile phone) only ran one built-in application (a push email client). Its ability to do email on a mobile handset made it very popular. But when real smartphones hit the market offering a wide array of applications from third-party software vendors, the BlackBerry became outmoded.

RIM has been unable to create a compelling software development framework for BlackBerry and cultivate a significant third-party software ecosystem for the platform. A massive software industry has grown up around iOS and Android like we haven't seen since the rise of the desktop computer in the second half of the 1980s, and RIM isn't part of it. They're still selling standalone push email handsets.

[artist-53]

10:24 AM on 10/12/2011

All the Countries that are experiencing problems.....begs this question to be asked.

Is this a concerted effort disguised as a glitch in order to decrease communications between demonstrators.

In each of the Countries listed, major demonstrations are taking place.

Middle East, Europe, Africa, India, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

[karen lyons kalmenson]

09:48 AM on 10/12/2011

who is giving blackberry the raspberry;-D

[Mary Thompson]

01:48 PM on 10/12/2011

I just realized mine is on the fritz!

[karen lyons kalmenson]

01:52 PM on 10/12/2011

ditto:(

[gemini68]

09:39 AM on 10/12/2011

RIMM needs to just call it a day and see of they can sale what's left of there now antiquated company.

[AbsurdoMonkey]

09:33 AM on 10/12/2011

Dominican Republic is also experiencing outage of the Blackberry services.