RIM affirms that BlackBerry services are down -- again

Oh noes! BlackBerry addicts everywhere have reason to panic this afternoon, as their beloved network is indeed experiencing technical difficulties -- and it's certainly not the first time that this has happened in the past year. Reportedly, an e-mail sent by RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson affirmed that a "critical severity outage" had taken place. The message went on to say that it was acting as an "emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," that was (is) affecting enterprise subscribers and "users of the Americas network." So much for that "won't happen again" line, huh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[Brandon @ Feb 11th 2008 5:22PM]

oh snap.

was wondering what the dealio was!

[Blank Stare @ Feb 11th 2008 5:27PM]

I do not understand how a critical system outage can occur.

No one knows about...you know...redundancy in the Far North?

Eh?

[Dave @ Feb 11th 2008 7:03PM]

I think the joke here would be:

"No one knows about...you know...redundancy in the Far Far North?"

[sepirioth @ Feb 11th 2008 9:09PM]

dont think you want to go there buds :)

[Travis @ Feb 11th 2008 5:28PM]

We've been down for ~2 hours (since 3:18 PM Eastern).

[mike @ Feb 11th 2008 5:28PM]

You know, with all these outages I am shocked that they still have users!

[Anthony @ Feb 11th 2008 5:32PM]

They'd like to cancel, but every time they send an email it gets delayed.

[Baseer @ Feb 11th 2008 5:32PM]

My bb is still working?

I'm on a BES, Cali, on AT&Ts network.

[ev01 @ Feb 11th 2008 5:30PM]

So like, with Windows Mobile and Exchange 2007... tell me again why BlackBerry is better?

[Kamokazi @ Feb 11th 2008 5:40PM]

Because everyone (read: people who don't understand technology in the slightest) knows what it is, of course, and naturally, something they haven't heard of couldn't possibly be any better. Besides, who wants to show off some lame thing called a Tilt to their golfing buddies? Better make IT order whatever they think they need...

[Bizam! @ Feb 11th 2008 5:31PM]

Coming from a system admin, RIM officially needs to get their act together! If they want to keep their market share, they need to find out why this keeps happening...and/or fire someone who keeps tripping over the wrong network cable.

[Willis @ Feb 11th 2008 6:35PM]

It was obviously the Chinese. They know that most of our Government uses Blackberries, including the White House, so they took the service down do disrupt communications prior to launching the first wave of attacks.

[ev01 @ Feb 11th 2008 5:33PM]

I agree.. there is a reason this is happening, and with the type of I.T. budget that I assume RIM has, there really isn't a good excuse for this type of mass outtage! Bad form, RIM.. BAD FORM!

[Aaron @ Feb 11th 2008 5:35PM]

@Mike --All these outages. RIM's Noc located in the great white north handles all of NA's BlackBerry emails every single one passes through that NOC. With 2-3 million users in the area thats alot of messages. They maintain a 99% up time and sometimes as we all know things dont always go as planned. They have and will always have customers because this sort of thing rarely happens.
All in all its still the best solution out there isnt it?

[Josh L @ Feb 11th 2008 5:48PM]

Everyone and their mother can claim a 99% uptime and be technically correct.

This is why those extra .99999%'s are important! ;)

[kjb434 @ Feb 11th 2008 5:50PM]

Microsoft exchange over WinMo or even Symbian and Palm is more reliable because is pushed the email load onto each companies own email servers versus one centralized location.

[John @ Feb 11th 2008 5:51PM]

Actually, I think XBL's running annual uptime is lower than 99%... so much for 'anyone'.

[Darkest Daze @ Feb 11th 2008 8:19PM]

And there-in lies the problem. A company of this size that relies on a single service to bring in it's customers should NOT be located in a single place with a single system to handle all the traffic. They should have multiple data centers in different parts of the country with back-up systems at each. So if internet/power/infrastructure goes down at one location, they can either switch to it's backup system or reroute the traffic to a part of the country that is out.

Remember when Steam went down for a couple days because Valve based the login server in a single location and then they lost power? Yea, people weren't very happy to hear that their service was down because a company who's whole business revolves around a couple servers wasn't able to function because they didn't think about being redundant.

[Expunged @ Feb 11th 2008 5:36PM]

www.dataoutages.com

[David Jefferson @ Feb 11th 2008 5:36PM]

My berry was down on Saturday and Sunday, came back up Monday morning then went away in the middle of the afternoon. This was not just mine but everyon in my organization so twhat is this bull about a sudden problem developing today? It has been developing for days!!!!

[attathomeguy @ Feb 11th 2008 5:37PM]

BIS here on Sprint in northern cali and all is fine. Weird

[allison @ Feb 13th 2008 4:07PM]

I have a blackberry pearl. I can use it just fine. So not EVERYONE is without coverage...Or I am severely lucky.

[dep @ Feb 11th 2008 6:17PM]

if the system is down, *to whom* did they send the email? will we get it when the system comes back up?

did msft buy rim when we weren't looking? this kind of service is redmond-like.

[Donald @ Feb 11th 2008 6:21PM]

Customers with RIM support contracts that are "hueg liek Xbox" get network updates. Reuters broke this, so presumably someone there qualifies.

[Truthjerk @ Feb 11th 2008 5:42PM]

From CNN:
"BlackBerry maker Research in Motion did not immediately return a phone call."

Well duh..

[kevjohn @ Feb 11th 2008 5:45PM]

The bad news keeps getting worse. First I hear they're raising the price of a stamp by one cent, now this!

[Razor1973 @ Feb 11th 2008 5:58PM]

LOL @ kevjohn

[sabih @ Feb 11th 2008 5:47PM]

hmm

[sabih @ Feb 11th 2008 5:49PM]

A component of the network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption.

Devices may not receive new service books. BlackBerry Connect and BlackBerry-enabled devices that require a new PIN may be unable to receive the PIN.

BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may be unable to connect to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.

Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers.

Incident Window Start Date and Time: 11 February 2008 15:20:00 (EST) Downtime Duration: Ongoing % of Subscribers Affected: 50.00 (estimated)

Cause: To Be Determined

EST = GMT - 5 hours
EDT = GMT - 4 hours
AEST = GMT + 10 hours

[nick.bratten @ Feb 11th 2008 6:03PM]

Hmm my iPhone is working just fine. And to think I got lol'd at by my Blackberry toting comrades.

WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!?!?

[Carey @ Feb 11th 2008 6:10PM]

Lol im using an iphone too.

But you my friend are being a jerk. haha

[mattcam3 @ Feb 11th 2008 6:10PM]

My BlackBerry on T-Mobile (in NJ) hasent had any issues and all of my mail has been going through just fine...

[dep @ Feb 11th 2008 6:19PM]

actually, it may be that one too many bby users tried to get google maps to work . . .

[Jeff @ Feb 11th 2008 6:20PM]

Blackberry sux! iPhone FTW!

haha, just kidding, i don't own an iPhone. stupid Sprint.

[Bill @ Feb 11th 2008 6:32PM]

I have had plenty of E-mails lost to the ethereal "internet" over the years ( I have been breaking these damn chip stuffed boxes for nearly 35 years). I have a love hate relationship with all of it. At least my Blackberry does tell me when it doesn't go through (no delivery receipt). When it doesn't, I actually dial a freakin' phone number and follow up (yeah, I get out of breath with all that exercise, lol). As far as I know email isn't "legal service" of information in any fashion so anyone relying upon it as such is a fool. And oh, by the way, mine has worked fine since I have owned it, and I have never lost any email to any outages here in Southern Cal. Like Kat Williams says, "don't be surprised when haters hate. It's their damn jobs."

[saq @ Feb 11th 2008 6:33PM]

Blackberry's infrastructure is ridiculous. There are several levels of servers that all of your emails have to go through in order for an email in your Exchange inbox to your Blackberry. Windows Mobile + Exchange Activesync has a HUGE step up on BB in this fashion. I've done a few conversions for clients this year taking them from 30+ BBs to Windows Mobile devices and they can't be happier.

[attathomeguy @ Feb 11th 2008 6:38PM]

Northern Cali Sprint BIS now is having 1 hour delays or more getting emails to the BB

[Steffen Jobbs @ Feb 11th 2008 6:52PM]

Oh, oh!. Better look out for an increase in suicide rates. When one can't get push e-mail every minute, the world is definitely coming to an end.

[CUJim @ Feb 11th 2008 7:04PM]

Running BES on VZW in NJ and not a glitch all day. Guess I'm in the lucky 50%.

[Rask @ Feb 11th 2008 7:38PM]

Well the BES I manage just cleared out all it's mail queues over the last 10 minutes or so. Guess whatever was broken over at RIM is fixed now.

[SHoe @ Feb 11th 2008 7:49PM]

Same here - fixed.

[BBaddict4423 @ Feb 11th 2008 7:52PM]

My BB 8820 using BIS on at&t hasn't seen any hickup all day (Utah, USA)

[Matthew Nelson @ Feb 11th 2008 7:42PM]

I'm typing this on my Blackberry Curve, and haven't noticed an outage. This service has been by far the most relia

[Matthew Nelson @ Feb 11th 2008 7:45PM]

Sorry. I know it makes no sense regarding the mail outage, but it had to be done.

[sepirioth @ Feb 11th 2008 9:08PM]

shouldnt have added the follow up, if someone didnt get how funny that was you dont want them reading your posts ;)

[MBN @ Feb 13th 2008 1:34PM]

The follow up wasn't to help people get the (lame) joke, but to acknowledge that it made no sense. A blackberry mail outage wouldn't effect posting a message on the browser.

[OffTopic Man @ Feb 11th 2008 7:45PM]

People have to stop with this BlackBerry non-sense and just start using "the source" its called Exchange! ActiveSync has been around forever and it works like a charm and does everything BlackBerry does. You know why? Because in most cases BlackBerry actually relies on Exchange for all the back-end mail/contacts/calendar functionality.

[xdrius @ Feb 11th 2008 9:11PM]

All blackberry users should seriously consider getting the iPhone.

[Darkest Daze @ Feb 11th 2008 9:28PM]

Yea, at least they can just use push or exchange...oh wait.

[Denver_80203 @ Feb 11th 2008 11:23PM]

Not until iPhone seriously supports exchange. I can rip out a line of meaningful text on a BB keyboard tens times faster than on the pocket ego mirror.