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BlackBerry outage, which has cut millions in Europe and the United States over three days tracked in the data center in Slough

Syed101 | October 12, 2011 | 0 Comments

A major service blackout hit all data services for a huge number of BlackBerry customers in dozens of countries yesterday BlackBerry users in the UK were hit with service disruptions to their smartphones for a third successive day after an unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services. Sir Alan Sugar tweeted, ‘In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such a outage as experienced by BlackBerry. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to fix.’ Former political spin doctor Alastair Campbell said, ‘Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after.’ BlackBerry’s UK managing director Stephen Bates said, ‘We thought we had found the problem, but we had not. We are working around the clock to get to the bottom of it.’ Canadian merchant bank Jaguar Financial Corp said holders of at least 8 percent of Research in Motion’s stock are behind its campaign for a shake-up of the company. BlackBerry has not explained why back-up systems have failed to solve the fault, or why it has repeatedly assured customers the fault had been fixed when it has clearly not.

Lord Sugar voices his outrage this morning – but Twitter and other social networks were also deluged by complaints from ordinary users

A BlackBerry spokesperson refused to confirm to Mail Online how many users were affected, or even which countries were affected by today’s ongoing glitch. This came after parent company RIM claimed that yesterday’s 10-hour glitch had been fixed. It’s a serious embarrassment for the company, which has 70million users worldwide – and appeared to be traceable to the same data centre in Slough where yesterday’s problems originated. Twitter was filled with users cursing BlackBerry and jokes at the company’s expense – ‘What did one BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry user? Nothing.’ The company has also been criticised for its failure to communicate during the crisis. Matt Bath, Which Magazine’s technology editor said, ‘BlackBerry should be doing more to keep customers informed about the ongoing problems with its service.’ ‘In some cases, customers have heard about the issue from their mobile network provider but have heard nothing from BlackBerry itself. That’s not great customer service.’ It's the latest in a series of high-profile embarrassments for the company - including the failure of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, a clunky, business-oriented tablet that offered little new The incident is the latest in a series of high-profile embarrassments for the company – including the failure of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (pictured left), a clunky, business-oriented tablet that offered little new

BLACKBERRY BLACKOUT: WHAT WENT WRONG?

Was it sabotage? Sir Alan Sugar speculated that the service outage could be due to hackers – ‘Can’t understand BlackBerry situation. Could it be a hacker trying to sabotage system. If they get into the Pentagon they can get into RIM, ‘ he wrote on Twitter. So far, RIM has maintained that the problems are down to a failure that hit its main system, then a failure in its back-up system. When will it start working again?BlackBerry has not confirmed. It has twice said that service has been restored, only for it to fail again. Who is affected? Widespread service failure has hit users for three days in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Today, some users are reporting slow service in the U.S. – possibly a side-effect of the escalating email backlog suffered by the company. Will users be compensated? So far, BlackBerry has not mentioned compensation for either consumer or corporate users in any of its various apologies. That may change, however. What does it mean for Blackberry?Disaster. With Apple’s iOS 5 launching tonight, and iPhone 4S due on Friday, these troubles could not have come at a worse time.

Ordinary users were simply furious – one Tweeter said, ‘It’s ridiculous! SORT IT OUT!’ and many talked of switching handset: ‘What is wrong with Blackberry? Systems freeze too often. I’m getting closer to an iPhone.’ On Tuesday, UK operator T-Mobile UK blamed ‘a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network’ which it said was affecting all mobile operators. There were also reports of problems across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Etisalat, which operates in the United Arab Emirates, apologized for ‘the further interruption’ to Blackberry services, ‘once again due to RIM problems.’ There were no reports of any problems in the U.S. The problem which started on Monday saw millions of customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa unable to send instant messages or access the internet. A RIM spokesman said: ‘We’re investigating, and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused whilst this is resolved.’ RIM recently appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee following the riots which took place in England in August. Much of the disorder was reportedly organised using its BlackBerry Messenger service.

Users were still able to access the internet on a WiFi network but email and the instant messaging service were cut off all together. It’s a major embarrassment for the company, which prides itself on routing email and messages securely and privately through its servers.