One of the most popular smartphones for business people is the BlackBerry.
The device is also dubbed the “CrackBerry” by some users because for many life
without the device is difficult.
Monday, BlackBerry users began to report that the BlackBerry data service
provided by Research in Motion (RIM) was down. According to InformationWeek,
users of the BlackBerry service reported problems sending and receiving email and documents.
An AT&T spokesperson says that AT&T learned of the outages at about
3:30 p.m. eastern time and that the problem was not with the AT&T network
or other wireless networks. The problem was with the RIM-supplied data service.
An email message was sent to large BlackBerry customers from RIM calling the
problem a, “current BlackBerry infrastructure outage.” The outage was only on
the Americas network according to RIM.
This wass the second outage of the BlackBerry service. DailyTech
reported in April of 2007 about the massive outage
that left many BlackBerry users without service. Reuters
quotes Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at AR
Communications as saying, “service reliability is a serious concern for
companies like RIM, because if problems become routine, they can turn customers
and prospective buyers away.” Levy described the outages as “a major Achilles
heel” for RIM.
RIM announced today that the service
outage lasted for three hours and was caused by a system upgrade that was
performed to increase the overall capacity of BlackBerry email and data
services. According to RIM these upgrades are done regularly and similar
upgrades have been done in the past without any issues.
InformationWeek reports RIM issued a written statement on the outage,
“RIM's early investigation of the service interruption that occurred on Monday
points to a problem with an internal data routing system within the BlackBerry
service infrastructure that had been recently upgraded. The upgrade was part of
RIM's routine and ongoing efforts to increase overall capacity for longer term
growth.”
