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.

Comments

Central point of failure..

[NeuralAbyss]

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.

Re:Central point of failure..

[netsavior]

BB is essential for cwhoreporate systems, because NO OTHER PHONE ON THE MARKET ANYWHERE matches its functionality... they can issue you a phone, then enforce strong passwords, content filtering, disable cameras so you don't end up sending pictures of your Christmas party indiscretion to your whole team, etc etc. Hell I can see my internal websites (not published to the internets) on my BB because it is basically VPN'd 24x7 to my work network.

In short, if you use your phone for email and dicking around, then the BB is one of the worst smartphones for you... if you are a corporate entity that wants to have certain employees "connected" at all times, then there is no other choice. The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry.

Re:Central point of failure..

[rickb928]

"The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry."

Because, as you implied in your post, BlackBerry phones 'just work'. Most of the time.

Push e-mail? A BIS phone works splendidly. BIS handles the actual polling. Even OWA seems to work fo those of us without BB servers at the home office. Ask your favorite Android user how their POP/IMAP email is working. Full disclosure; I am an Android user, G-1 on Donut. iPhone users, I have no idea how you POP mail works, but it can't be too bad or you all would have ditched... wait, nevermind.

Web browsing? Very well done, considering the platform, since your BES is essentially a proxy server that solves some problems and gives you an enhanced experience. BIS does this also, just not as customizable as having a BES of your own.

BIS is a good idea, though it does expose the single-point-of-failure issue. But, consider your cell service in general:

- Most of us forget that the first single-point-of-failure is probably a cell tower. Yep, you might have two or three that can serve you, but if the backhaul from your tower is fritzed, you might have to wait until you get paroled from that tower, and move one to one that isn't hosed.

- The next single-point-of-failure is probably a metro area uplink for your carrier. I don't know for sure, but I suspect redundancy here is not universal.

- God forbid your carrier is architected like T-Mobile, or your single-point-of-failure is either a GSM service that has to be responsive or your phone is doing rock imitations, or a similar CDMA. I hear CDMA doesn't have the same architecture, but if your carrier can't authenticate you to the network, u b hosed.

RIM has had more than its share of outages over the last two years, but they have been notable because of the popularity of the platform. I ditched my BB to try Android. My wife has not been affected by either outage this month - be they natiowide or global or whatever. Her BB Curve hasn't missed a beat. Lucky I guess. And she would not like my G1, or Andriod, at all. Too much fuss. She just wants mail and minimal web when she wants it.

Dump on RIM if you want, but their platform works very well. Outages aside, it is a superior corporate solution, and makes most other platforms look like pants. Wait, are there ANY other corporate platforms?

Thank you Karma

[Gothmolly]

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.

One wonders...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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?

Re:BLACKBERRY IS US ONLY SO N.A. IS IGNORANT !!

[acoustix]

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.