I have been using Blackberry devices for at least 3 years and I have not seen a service failure like the one that occurred today. Millions of users were left without any of their services: Email, Web Browser, Blackberry Messenger,etc. This failure is not related to an specific carrier but to a general RIM failure.
It seems that this is only affecting individual users (BIS) because the enterprise service (BES) is working correctly. Good to know that Blackberry is really protecting their biggest source of income and the one who can hurt the most if something wrong happens.
Going int Blackberry help twitter account, we can find this:
Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We're investigating, and we apologize for any inconvenience. ^PM
According to BBC News, “the problem appears to have originated in a data center in Slough which handles Blackberry services for the affected regions.”
This is a tremendous hit to the manufacturer that currently is struggling to convince customer to pick their handhelds against well positioned iPhone and Android devices. Actually, many companies are shifting for better services and support. Apple has made a good effort to improve their business email systems which makes them a really good option for companies.
The service failure provoked that the Blackberry users (including myself) to communicate in twitter the frustration and the lack of communication of blackberry to the end users.
Vodafone, Telefónica and Orange, the biggest carriers in Europe, said in Twitter that the failure is exclusively RIM’s and that it affects ALL the carriers.
RIM uses their own servers to send and receive messages, email and others worldwide. This is particulary vulnerable when cascade failures occurs like the one today. In the same way, this weakness is also their main strength in countries of the Middle East due to its independence, because their communication cannot be tracked or intercepted by local authorities.
So far there is no official news about when is the failure going to be fixed. Hope that this will be fixed soon.
