RIM Explains Major BlackBerry Outage

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion said Wednesday that the ongoing service disruptions affecting BlackBerry users around the world had been caused by an infrastructure failure that disrupted the company's systems and led to a backlog of messages.

RIM's CTO for software David Yach said during a press conference that RIM's systems had suffered a "core switch failure" and that backup systems had failed to kick in, resulting in a "large backlog of messages" that stressed RIM's infrastructure and caused the service issues, now in their third day, to spread beyond Europe to the Americas, along with a number of other countries.

The company did not specify how long it expects to take for the backlog to clear and the outage to be fixed.

Some "millions" of BlackBerry users in Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East and Americas have been unable to browse the web, use BlackBerry Messenger or consistently access email from their devices, Reuters reported.

RIM specifically noted that it saw "no evidence" to suggest a breach or hack had caused the service interruptions and noted that once full service is restored, the company will be performing additional analysis to understand what caused the problems,

"Some of the substantial queueing we've seen starting in Europe, as it's taken us time to get Europe back to a stable situation, has caused some impact in other geographies with messages bound for Europe," said Yach.

The hashtag "#OtrosUsosParaElBlackberry" (or, "other uses for a BlackBerry") was trending on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon as users took to the social media site to vent about the smartphone's problems.

Jersey Shore's Snooki complained, "Blackberry outage? Let's get real here blackberry ugh."

Prolific tweeter Piers Morgan seemed poised to live blog his experience of the outage and posted four frustrated tweets about the service issues in a half-hour span.

"OK, this #Blackberry business is now SERIOUSLY pissing me off," he wrote, followed later by, "One positive of the #Blackberry crisis - my personal trainer can't get hold of me. #OrderingBurgers."

RIM's timing couldn't be worse: the service issues hit North America the same day Apple released the new version of its iPhone software, iOS 5, and just a few days ahead of the launch of its new iPhone 4S.

"We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available," RIM said in a statement, according to CNN.

Comments

[rp2009]

11:45 PM on 10/12/2011

The once great RIM is not working on a great new device to once again compete in this new-fangled world we live in. No, their courageous technicians are braving dark smoke and soot, inside cavernous buildings, working on cranking the generators, checking vacuum tubes, the points on the carburetors. Checking oil levels, doing everything they can to try and get their customers old-time telephony machines working again so their customers in nursing homes around the world can receive communications from their kids again. God bless them!

[rjansen3]

11:18 PM on 10/12/2011

I'm confused. How do you guys figure a company posting record profits quarter after quarter with BILLIONS in liquid assets is dying? Might it be because you spend your time reading "tech news" on a website that has "weekly Apple rumor roundups" on its FRONT PAGE? I'd imagine that might have something to do with it. Regardless, RIM maintains a 99.9% up time for its services which is quite amazing considering the number of subscribers. And for the person who thinks their servers were hacked, its never happened, ever. More than can be said for Apple, Android, (old) Windows Phone, WebOS, or Symbian. In fact, a BlackBerry had never been successfully "hacked" until RIM included an Apple product, Webkit, in their Browser.

[geralddiamnd]

01:02 AM on 10/13/2011

Sounds like you're tied into a contract and/or youve got some heavy emotional capital invested.

[eco sys]

03:47 AM on 10/13/2011

And for the person who thinks their servers were hacked, its never happened, ever:

[eco sys]

03:47 AM on 10/13/2011

Not that you know off...

[Gronkie]

11:09 PM on 10/12/2011

From my experience with Blackberry, when the system goes down, the service actually improves. I switched to Android six months ago and love it. If you have RIMM stock, dump it as fast possible.

[jostasauce]

11:06 PM on 10/12/2011

Goodbye, RIM. It was already losing the smart phone wars. These problems are just speeding up RIM bankruptcy filing.

[cbirch15]

10:58 PM on 10/12/2011

Coming to a smartphone near you, a film by Ridley Scott: BlackBerry Down, starring an angry cast of millions.

[E V]

10:36 PM on 10/12/2011

The end is nigh. (which is why I moved to droid a couple months ago).

[Brad Bishop]

10:36 PM on 10/12/2011

As a corporate user, all I can say is that this hurts RIM even more.

Four years ago we were a Blackberry house exclusively but now we support Blackberries, Droids and the iPhone. Each has its negatives and positives but with each passing day, more and more users are leaving BBs for Droids and iPhones.

RIM still makes some of the best phones (hardware) in the market but even with the purchase of QNX, RIM's software still lags far behind the competition.

System failures such as this just makes it harder to stay with them.

[Mister Grumpy]

10:32 PM on 10/12/2011

This outage is just one of many nails that will be pounded into RIM's coffin.

[canuckhoser]

10:20 PM on 10/12/2011

How low our culture was sunk to ever include a quote by snooki in any news article...

[mabnightowl]

09:06 PM on 10/12/2011

Ah, but will they get a discount for the time period their service was down? Hmm...

[Erik Kartmann]

08:15 PM on 10/12/2011

TG my bottle opener didn't fail me today!
Go grape.

[metogamekun]

07:50 PM on 10/12/2011

I almost longed for an iPhone today.

It will pass.

[Onutz]

11:14 PM on 10/12/2011

((I almost longed for an iPhone today.
It will pass.))

Resist at all cost!!
Unless you want to actually love your phone and be labeled a fanboi for the rest of your life , don't go for it!

[eco sys]

03:50 AM on 10/13/2011

get that Iphone so that you can get it out of your system and then get a real phone

[Onutz]

01:03 PM on 10/13/2011

((get that Iphone so that you can get it out of your system and then get a real phone))

See what kind of comments you'll be subjected to if you get an iPhone. DON'T DO IT - you'll be despised like you've never been despised before!!

[metogamekun]

03:13 PM on 10/13/2011

I've probably been despised before. I think I can take it. ; )

[lakabux]

06:56 PM on 10/12/2011

How long before somebody acknowledges that someone hacked BB's servers?

[David McDevitt]

06:42 PM on 10/12/2011

"The company did not specify long it expects to take for the backlog to clear and the outage to be fixed. "

GET A PROOFREADER HPOST, U SUK

[SouthJewishWman]

06:36 PM on 10/12/2011

Well, for two years I did like my BB, but it's time for an Android or iPhone.