Millions affected as BlackBerry outage spreads to North America

[Bosonic]

Source: Reuters

A BlackBerry outage that is affecting millions of the users of the smartphone spread to North America and rolled into its third day Wednesday as the device’s manufacturer Research in Motion Inc. said it was working to solve the problem.

“No emails or BBMs so far today,” one BlackBerry user said in a comment posted on The Globe and Mail’s website. “They laid off the wrong IT guys I think!”

Reports in various media quoted a statement issued by Research in Motion Inc. (RIM-T24.59-0.55-2.19%) Tuesday night saying that problems with email, text messaging and other problems were caused by a “core switch failure” in the infrastructure at its head office in Waterloo, Ont.

Problems began Monday for BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In the days since outages have been reported in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada. So far the United States market appears unscathed.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/millions-affected-as-blackberry-outage-spreads-to-north-america/article2198209/

[Frank Coffin]

1. Well, two outages in two different continents

Not looking good for Canadian-based RIM.

I think RIM will be declaring bankruptcy soon.

[formercia]

2. Maximizing profits by putting Bean Counters in charge.

It works until something like this happens. The people they laid off were the ones with experience, but the Bean Counters said it cost too much. Redundancy is too expensive. Cut, cut. We must justify our jobs or we may be next, they thought to themselves.

[Auggie]

3. +1

[SpiralHawk]

4. Republicon Family Bean Counter Values

lead to FAIL - again and again

[Bosonic]

5. Blackberry problems spread to USA

Problems with the Blackberry smartphone system appear have to spread to the United States.

Users began to report outages on Wednesday, with many turning to Twitter to complain about their lack of email.

The latest development follows two days of sporadic blackouts across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Blackberry's owner, RIM, said that the earlier problem was caused by core and back-up switch failures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15276481

[backscatter712]

6. I'm so glad I switched to an Android phone. n/t

[WilliamPitt]

7. Mine still works

:shrug:

[valerief]

8. Is there any way that the very wealthy benefit from this outage, this loss of

communication?

[Ikonoklast]

9. My daughter had problems with her BB, they thought it was a hardware issue.

One year and three BB's all with issues later, she got an iPhone and never looked back.

[Ruby the Liberal]

10. I am surprised RIM is still in business

and was shocked when the government agreed to allow the President to continue his service with them (albeit secured).

The mere thought of having all of your emails and data rerouted to a data center in Canada for distribution to your device always seemed like a losing proposition (bottle neck) to me.

I get that some corporate security policies require BB or nothing when it comes to their email data (my last employer was this way), but it is rather annoying to be tied like that when you can use the same secured login to access email over the web that you use from home or your desk.

[Speck Tater]

11. This is merely a foretaste of how fragile our vast interconnected systems really are.

Expect to see this kind of thing more and more frequently as the system grows beyond our capacity to maintain it. The power grid is another fragile bit of technology just waiting to crash. We like to think of ourselves as highly advanced but the truth is our technology is hanging on to the edge of the cliff by its finger tips. There are just too many ways these days that one "small" failure in one small piece of equipment can bring a whole system to its knees.

[NBachers]

12. Intentionally or unintentionally- either way

[SoapBox]

13. Don't got one, never had one and don't care...

*yawn*

Guess the Addicted will be going nuts.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jaysunb]

15. I've been hit by this...

glad to find out what's going on.

THANKS DU ! :)