BlackBerry E-Mail Service Interrupted
My BlackBerry in’t working this morning. Apparently, I’m not alone.
Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry phone, said some North American customers using the device are experiencing problems with their e-mail service.
Technicians are working on the problem, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. Phone service and Web browsing aren’t affected, RIM said.
Businesses and governments worldwide rely on BlackBerrys for communication. RIM, which competes with devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone, had about 32 million subscribers globally at the end of August.
The outage is affecting all BlackBerry users, regardless of their carrier, who are using RIM’s Internet-based e-mail service instead of corporate servers, said Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. wireless carrier.
This happens frequently enough that it’s a nuisance but not enough to cancel the service. It’s one of the irritants of our networked existence that we’re all subject to the mercies of server farms and a handful of other choke points.
Sad that after all the survivability and adaptability designed into the original internet that those who came later to provide services build failure into their systems. These failure points are built into these systems by their designers either for cost savings, control, or outright lack of foresight.
During Katrina, I had a Mississippi number with T-Mobile. Even when out of the disaster area I couldn’t receive calls although I had no trouble making them. T-Mobile claimed ignorance but it was apparent, any call to a MS number had to bounce off their MS servers and they apparently couldn’t move their routing tables out of the area.
RIM has apparently decided redundancy isn’t a priority and are just waiting for hackers to kill their business model.
So… they e-mailed a statement to people letting them know their e-mail wasn’t working?
They probably emailed the press release to their press list to get the word out. Which makes sense, given people are naturally going to be Googling for answers.