Today is the third consecutive day that millions of BlackBerry users, spanning four continents, are without BlackBerry Internet Services, and social networks remain abuzz with irate utterings.
While BlackBerry loyalists have been left in the dark since the blackout on Monday, the smartphone's creator Research In Motion (RIM) continues to offer little to no enlightenment to its questioning customers.
Responding to questions posed this morning as to when BlackBerry subscribers can expect to have their services restored, and whether the company would offer any compensation to its customers for the lingering inconvenience, RIM said there was “no indication” at this point.
Late on Tuesday, following two days of media badgering, RIM released a statement informing the public as to the cause of the protracted outage.
“The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a backup switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated, and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.”
Dawning of the debacle
Monday morning, at about 11am local time, saw the onset of what was to be a continual and widespread outage affecting millions of BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Affected parties were unable to browse the Web, use their instant messaging or access Internet services, such as e-mail.
On Tuesday, RIM announced that the problem, the cause of which the company would not disclose, was fixed and services restored.
However, barely had the announcement reached the public when complaints started pouring in, at about noon, that services were down again.
While BlackBerry users gnashed their teeth, venting via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, the Canadian smartphone maker remained mum. RIM declined to respond to questions as to the cause of the outage, or when its customers could expect to be back online.
Twitter talk
Micro-blogging Web site Twitter has this week been dominated by trends revolving around BlackBerry and RIM. The hue and cry from a host of hapless subscribers was born out of a combination of their frustration with their inoperative devices and dissatisfaction with the way in which RIM communicated, or failed to communicate, with them.
One subscriber tweeted: “fed up with blackberry now, using all my texts i pay for bbm & will have to pay more for texts now for going over my 500!” (sic)
Some ranted: “Dear Cracked-Berry. You're wasting my time . . . and money.” (sic)
“day 3 of blackberry black-out. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. handling so far [terrible] .” (sic)
“Clearly doing some urgent emails before travelling to the office is not productive if Blackberry isn't sending grrrr”. (sic)
Others quipped: “Dear Blackberry: You are once again on some BBM BS. Please start acting right or you're getting an Iphone Spanking.” (sic)
“Having my new Blackberry delivered today. Not sure where it should go: mantelpiece, or bottom of swimming pool.” (sic)
“black.ber.ry /ˈblakˌberē/ verb: to fail or disappoint or not work as expected (blackberried, blackberrying)”. (sic)
Core leadership failure?
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says the lack of transparency and availability with regards to its EMEA customers, who represent RIM's strongest recent growth and greatest customer loyalty, is appalling.
He suggests the company's apathy is both disturbing and damaging, serving only to open the doors to speculation and criticism.
Goldstuck says: “Speculation is rife, and it has also been reported that the databases handling the routing of traffic have become corrupted and need to be restored, hence the long delays.”
He says, considering RIM's deflection and lack of communication, “it is hard to tell whether their backup system is robust enough to handle a core failure.
“The three fundamental rules of crisis management are 'communicate, communicate, communicate', along with round-the-clock availability of executive leadership. This has been completely absent in RIM's case, suggesting not a core switch failure, but a core leadership failure.”
Already holding a precarious position in the market, the disruptions could not have come at a worse time for the company, flagged by industry professionals and the media to be a prime takeover target. Reuters reports: “The disruption piles pressures on RIM, which is fending off investor calls for a management shake-up and possible sale or split of the company.”
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