14 DAY TRIAL // The Blackberry wireless email service provided by RIM seems to have suffered a widespread outage that started last night. As expected, this led to massive complaints from customers that were quite annoyed with not being able to use the service starting from 5.15 pm PDT yesterday.
The ones that called Blackberry's technical support line were greeted with the following message: "Please be advised that we are currently experiencing a service interruption that is causing delays in sending and receiving messages. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available."
While NewsChannel4 reported that the issue affected all users in the Western hemisphere, according to the posts on the Blackberry forums, as well as comments from operators in Asia and Europe, the problem is apparently limited to North America. RIM officials have advised people to use Blackberry as a major way of communications to make back-up plans.
RIM users from Europe were unaware of the problems, apparently being able to use the service as they would normally. A T-Mobile Germany spokesperson hadn't noticed any problems at all, while users from Germany and France reported no interruption of the service.
According to Emma Mohr-McClune, principal analyst with Current Analysis, RIM currently operates two Network Operating Centers, both located in Canada. The outage is thought to have been caused by one of the company's NOCs going and down. The companies providing the service connect their mail servers to a Blackberry Enterprise Solution Server, located on their premises. Each BES is in turn linked to one of RIM's NOCs.