BlackBerry Outages Across North America
TheHappyMailAdmin writes "BlackBerry service in North America is out: no email, no BB Messenger and no web browsing. Last carrier estimate I got was 24 hours until service will be restored, with others saying they've gotten estimates from support from between 3 hours to 2 days. BES and BIS services are impacted, and it's across all carriers. Bad timing for RIM as people are wrapping up their holiday shopping..." Updated 18:11 GMT by timothy: Reader notheusualsuspect pings with a note that the service has been restored.
I did a test message from/to my BB too.
RTFA
* FINAL UPDATE: Things are back to normal. RIM Statment to follow. ...
RIM seems to be particularly odd in chosing an architecture that gives a single point of failure.
Then again, given most crackberry users.. nothing of value was lost.
BB users are the biggest type-A douchebags around. They differ from their hipster iPhone douchebag brethren by typically wearing suits, talking loudly on their phones while waiting in line, and driving faux-retro American sedans. I knew when I woke up this morning that it would be a good day, as if millions of douchebags cried out and were suddenly silenced. Merry Christmas to all.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My Blackberry has once again broken so I haven't been impacted by this outage. I haven't even had time to set up BB mail on my newest replaced Crapberry.
This is the first and last Blackberry I will ever owned, but because of Blackberry's poor quality, I'm now on my third one. Just trying to survive a 2 year contract on T-Mobile, America's worst cellphone company.
I don't know what phone I get next (Android or iPhone) but I promise I will never own another Blackberry as long as I live.
How long RIM's model of interposing their own(seemingly rather unstable) services lasts.
Obviously, when the carrier has some major fuckup, email/web aren't going to happen because the packets are being routed to their deaths, like so many binary lemmings, somewhere within the series of tubes.
RIM's presence in the loop, though, seems like an increasingly useless liability. Back when Blackberries were little more than pagers, in terms of hardware spec, RIM's service made sense. Now, though, phones are powerful enough to speak the same protocols as computers. Why, if my carrier is passing packets properly, and my mailserver is up, should RIM be standing in the middle?
Panic panic panicpanicpanic
Wait, I am posting this from my blackberry via BIS (RIM internet)...
Oh well, apparently the Armageddon is still a few days off.
My mom uses her crackberry to text me when she's buying presents for my son. I imagine a lot of people use their blackberry's that way. So now we are back to Christmas shopping circa 1985. It's positively barbaric!
This is my sig.
Actually, Blackberry has been advertising frequently lately, and if you were thinking of buying one for a Christmas present, and hear about the outage.... maybe you reconsider.
Crap, no work emails on Christmas Eve? Whatever shall we do?
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
The antecedent was defined in the previous sentence.
I find your lack of reading comprehension disturbing.
--
BMO
Actually no, that was a failure of just BIS. This is a bigger failure that affects messenger, BES and BIS.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
As a TV Master Control honcho in a previous life, I read stuff like this and I shake my head... hours?? DAYS?! In broadcasting, that's not an outage, that's a carefully orchestrated attack by space aliens. Why does anyone on the corporate management level even remotely tolerate this? What, there's not enough money changing hands over at RIM to merit hiring the right professionals and institute the proper safeguards and procedures? The infomercial that aired at 3AM on Channel 11 has a better back-up plan than RIM's entire service? It boggles...
In the meantime, the worldwide SMTP / POP / IMAP still works fine and serves millions (if not billions) of users with standards-based protocols.
It took me a few minutes to realize that my BBMs were not going through. I ended up just calling. Funny how after you are used to BBMing and emailing, that having to make a phone call and actually talking to someone seems to bother me.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
And yet strangely I can post this comment from my 'berry.
My Babylon
RIM (the company that runs the BB services) is a Canadian company that operates globally. So the original post is correct in saying North America.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I use Opera mini as my browser and have the gmail app for my email and calendar. That seems to avoid these problems. I've had my BB for almost a year now and like it a lot.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Congratulations! Your most productive day in recent memory involves posting comments to Slashdot.