Blackberry crumbles under another day of disruption

BlackBerry’s maker Research in Motion (RIM) said in a statement last night that service problems which started on Monday were due to a “core switch failure” within its infrastructure and assured users it was working to clear a “large backlog” of data.

But this morning the Twittersphere was still abuzz with criticism about problems with the service and RIM’s failure to explain it to users.

702JohnRobbie wrote: “Blackberry down again. Very poor communications from them about what the problem is. #Fail.”

Bombxleo said: “maybe i’d like my phone more if it wasn’t a stupid blackberry.”

Others resorted to humour to mock the disruption. Sickipediabot said “It was nice of Blackberry to honour Steve Jobs with two days of silence” - a reference to the recent death of the technology pioneer who founded rival firm Apple.

Problems with BlackBerry services started at around 11am on Monday. RIM initially gave the all-clear yesterday morning but was forced to admit in a recorded message later in the day that it was experiencing a “service” issue which was having an impact on subscribers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and several carriers from the Latin America region.

In a statement issued at 10pm UK time yesterday, RIM said: “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.”

Matt Bath, Which? technology editor said: “Most of us rely pretty heavily on our mobile phone to communicate with colleagues, family and friends, so when things go wrong, it’s incredibly frustrating.

“BlackBerry should be doing more to keep customers informed about the ongoing problems with its service.

“In some cases, customers have heard about the issue from their mobile network provider but have heard nothing from BlackBerry itself. That’s not great customer service.”