[Infowarrior] - Blackberry Outage Fixed, but Backlog Remains

[Richard Forno]

Blackberry Outage Fixed, but Backlog Remains

By Sam Diaz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 18, 2007; 3:06 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041800
496_pf.html

A service outage that left millions of Blackberry users across North America
without e-mail service for much of last night and this morning has been
fixed, but the backlog of e-mails on the network could keep the system from
returning to normal for some time.

Research In Motion, the Toronto-based company that provides the service,
said in a statement that the cause of the outage is being investigated and
that the network is being monitored to maintain normal service levels.

The disruption occurred sometime last evening, and service was intermittent
throughout the night. It affected e-mail customers on all wireless
companies. Voice services on Blackberry devices were not affected.

Verizon Wireless said its broadband and data services -- which allow users
to send text messages and surf the Internet -- were not impacted. And users
of handheld e-mail and smartphone devices, such as the Palm Treo, were not
affected. Blackberry users in Europe also were not affected.

AT&T Wireless said their customers were affected beginning at 8 p.m.
yesterday. A company spokesman said RIM contacted them at 6 a.m. this
morning and said service had been restored but the backlog of messages from
overnight hours would take time to reach users.

Still, the disruption was enough to frustrate business users who have come
to depend on the handheld device to communicate with business contacts.

Rebecca Skloot, a New York freelance writer and part-time teacher at New
York University, said she first noticed the outage around 8 p.m. yesterday
when e-mails that she had sent earlier started bouncing back.

"I'm completely dependent on my Blackberry," she said. "It's how I keep my
life organized. If my Blackberry goes down, I'm lost."

When e-mails started bouncing back, she thought something was wrong with her
device, she said.

"I kept rebooting, taking the battery out, shaking it, as if any of these
things would help," she said. "That was before I knew about the outage."