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BlackBerry outage affecting users in Europe, Middle East and Africa (update: service restored?)
While the two events are entirely unrelated, a major service outage coinciding with potentially the biggest mobile of the year hitting stores worldwide is just plain old unlucky. Users of RIM's BlackBerry service in the EMEA region are at the wrong end of a network problem affecting BBM, email and internet. At the moment it doesn't appear to be of the vast and crippling scale as last time, but small consolation if you're one of the unlucky ones. RIM has acknowledged the issue, and you can bet the farm on the fact there is more than a handful of slightly stressed engineers on the case, hoping to keep customers from making that impulse purchase. Let us know in the comments if you're affected. Update: We've just received this official statement from RIM in the UK: "Our apologies to any customers impacted by the BlackBerry service issue today. We can confirm that services have been restored and are now operating normally." Update 2: RIM has now issued a statement from CEO Thorsten Heins on the matter, in which he also apologizes and notes that up to six percent of the company's user base may have been affected with a "maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages." I want to apologize to those BlackBerry customers in Europe and Africa who experienced an impact in their quality of service earlier this morning. The BlackBerry service is now fully restored and I can report that no data or messages were lost. Up to 6 percent of our user base may have been impacted. Preliminary analysis suggests that those customers may have experienced a maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages. We are conducting a full technical analysis of this quality of service issue and will report as soon as it concludes. I again want to apologize to those customers who were impacted today.
RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has already apologized for last week's widespread BlackBerry outage, but apparently, that wasn't enough. Today, the manufacturer announced that it's offering customers a full slate of "premium apps" for free, in the hopes of earning back some of the goodwill it lost following that mysterious blackout. In a statement, the company said the gesture is "an expression of appreciation" for the patience that many BlackBerry users demonstrated during the incident, with Lazaridis adding that his company remains "committed to providing the high standard of reliability" that consumers have come to expect. For now, the company's offering a total of 12 apps (collectively valued at around $100), including SIMS 3, iSpeech Translator Pro and Shazam Encore among others, though more will be added at a later date. The offer kicks off on Wednesday and will last for a month, so head past the break to see which goodies are up for grabs.
Engadget Podcast 260 - 10.14.2011
Things are happening in the air around us: our tabazine is beaming its way to iPads around the globe, iThings are being shuffled to and from various parts of the stratosphere, and there was a frightening dearth of airborne activity in the BlackBerry-based community. Tangible inventions have also made their usual marks on the week in tech news: newly-minted iOS 5 guru Dante Cesa joins Tim and Brian this to bring it all down to earth and straight to your ears in this, the 260th episode of the Engadget Podcast.Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian HeaterGuest: Dante CesaProducer: Trent WolbeMusic: I Can't Go For That00:01:30 - Engadget Distro is ready for download!00:03:45 - Photoshop contest: send us your best / most terrifying Frankengadget00:05:00 - iOS 5 review00:13:30 - iCloud opens to the masses, iOS 5 lurks near00:23:45 - BlackBerry services offline for some in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Again. (update: RIM confirms India, South America, too)00:25:13 - BlackBerry outage spreads to US and Canada, continues in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America (update: RIM confirms)00:26:00 - Mike Lazaridis apologizes for BlackBerry outage: 'We've let many of you down' (video) (Update: full services restored)00:38:40 - Motorola Atrix 2 hands-on at CTIA E&A 2011 (video)00:41:18 - Archos 80 G9 review00:46:11 - T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II review00:52:15 - HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio review00:56:51 - ASUS Zenbook UX21 and UX31 headed to the US October 12, starting at $99900:59:02 - Samsung crashes iPhone 4S block party, lures Aussies with $2 Galaxy S IIs00:59:29 - Dennis Ritchie, pioneer of C programming language and Unix, reported dead at age 7001:00:12 - Listener questionsHear the podcastSubscribe to the podcast[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune MarketplaceDownload the podcastLISTEN (MP3)LISTEN (AAC)Contact the podcastSend your questions to @tim_stevens.Leave us a voicemail: (423) 438-3005 (GADGET-3005)E-mail us: podcast at engadget dot comTwitter: @bheater, @timstevens
RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn't provide ETA for restore
If you don't own a BlackBerry yourself, chances are you know somebody who does. And if that person lives in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America or South America, they're probably quite unhappy with RIM at the moment. This week's service outage began with a server failure in the UK, and spread like wildfire to Africa and the Middle East, before continuing on to parts of Asia, the US, Canada and a good portion of South America. This is only the latest BlackBerry service outage for RIM, bringing email, BBM and web browsing services to a halt. But with BlackBerry services playing a critical role in real-time business and government communications, any interruption is unacceptable, and costly for all. RIM CTO David Yach responded to questions during a press conference this afternoon, explaining the original cause of the outage (that UK server failure, along with a series of failed redundancies), and how that grew into the global outage we're experiencing now: "It's a backlog issue. Clearly we have a backlog in Europe, based on the initial outage and the time it's taken to stabilize that. At this point, we have not throttled the other regions, but as you can imagine, with the global reach of BlackBerry, people using it to contact others around the world, there's a lot of messages coming to Europe from Asia and the Americas, and those would be backed up on the other system. It's looking like over time that backlog built, and started impacting those other systems." The obvious solution would be to clear the backlog and restore service, but in doing so, RIM would purge any undelivered messages. Yach said that all emails will eventually be delivered, however, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about there (there was no related comment regarding BBM messages). When asked what the company would be doing to "make right" by way of its customers, Yach emphasized that his focus was only on restoring service at this point, and made no promises of restitution. Is the BlackBerry outage affecting you? Let us know by voting in our poll, or leaving a comment after the break.
BlackBerry outage spreads to US and Canada, continues in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America (update: RIM confirms)
It's day three of RIM's BlackBerry service outage in much of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil and Chile. But now the problem appears to have spread into Canada -- RIM's home turf -- and we're even hearing reports of some service issues in the US as well. We've reached out to RIM for comment, but we'd like to hear from you. Let us know whether or not you're having issues in the poll below, and jump past the break to sound off in the comments.%Poll-69781% Update: RIM has posted the following statement to its BlackBerry Service Update page: BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available. Update 2: RIM UK has also posted a statement: We know that many of you are still experiencing service problems. The resolution of this service issue is our Number One priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
BlackBerry services offline for some in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Again. (update: RIM confirms India, South America, too)
Well, RIM, things really aren't looking good for you over in EMEA, are they now? We've received several reports of a second BlackBerry outage for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, and our friends over at T-Mobile UK and Vodafone Egypt have confirmed again on Twitter, just several hours after RIM tweeted that service had been restored. So, what's going on over there? We're reaching out to RIM for a statement, and like those of you affected, we can only hope that things get back up and running very quickly. Are you outraged? Experiencing perfect service (and in EMEA)? Jump past the break to tell us what's up in the comments. Update: RIM has issued the following statement: Media statement - October 11 Some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays. We are working to restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Update 2: Another update from RIM: 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 back-up 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. We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
UK server failure sends BlackBerry devices offline in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (update: restored)
If there's one thing RIM doesn't need right now, it's another BlackBerry outage. Well, are you sitting down? RIM UK is currently investigating issues affecting "some users in EMEA" -- that's Europe, Middle East and Africa, for the acronym-disinclined. The company has turned to Twitter to acknowledge the outage, with T-Mobile UK and Vodafone Egypt chiming in as well (and pointing fingers at RIM, as expected). The Telegraph reports that the "glitch" hit around 11AM this morning local time, and is affecting email and instant messaging services, along with web browsing, leaving users unable to use their BlackBerrys for anything but making phone calls and sending texts. BlackBerry outages appear to be a rather frequent occurrence for RIM, typically hitting during peak usage times -- like, for example, 11AM on a Monday. So are you currently without service? Jump past the break to chime in with a comment. Update: BBC is reporting that email services have been restored after the outage affected millions of users. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
RIM experiencing yet another BlackBerry outage?
While reports are slow to come in so far, Blogging Stocks is now reporting that RIM may possibly have yet another outage on its hands, with at least some BlackBerry users in New York and Washington apparently getting nothing but a "data connection refused" error when they try to check their email. If it turns out to be of any size, this particular outage would be only the latest in a recent spate RIM has suffered -- and not even the first in the past month. As always, if you're experiencing some problems of your own, feel free to sound off in comments, preferably with details on your location, carrier, etc.
