BlackBerry Issues Spread to U.S. as Millions Are Cut Off Worldwide

foxnews.com - 10/12/2011
newswires

BlackBerry service outages spread into the U.S. on Wednesday, following days of disruptions across Europe and Asia that left millions without text communication services and Research in Motion struggling to fix what it called "a switching failure" in its private network.

RIM's official Twitter feed was last updated Tuesday night, saying problems were being resolved and it was sorry for the inconvenience.

Reuters reported that the company was advising large clients of the outage in the Americas as users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered patchy email service and no access to browsing and messaging -- ratcheting up negative sentiments towards 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 sol-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. 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."

Phone glitch- can't call us for help?
Schedule an appointment online at GeeksOnCall.com


Keywords: geeksoncall, geeks on call, geeksoncall.com, 800-905-geek, computer repair, computer service, home computer repair, home computer service, information technology, business network service, virus removal, network, wireless network, facebook, safety, analyze computer, internet explorer, malware, gmail, productivity...