[Infowarrior] - USA Blackberry Outage #2

[Richard Forno]

BlackBerry Blackout Strands Users
Failure Was Second In Less Than a Year
    
By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 12, 2008; Page D01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/11/AR2008021101
947.html

As the doors closed on the Metrorail train he was riding home from work
yesterday, ABC News senior political reporter Rick Klein reached for his
BlackBerry to encounter his worst nightmare: no new e-mails.

Earlier, Klein had been getting hundreds of e-mails an hour for his
political blog "The Note" in preparation for today's Potomac Primary. But
like millions of BlackBerry users across the country, he was caught up in an
afternoon blackout that lasted for more than three hours.

For Klein, being cut off from e-mail, even during his half-hour commute to
his home on Capitol Hill, seemed intolerable.

"It was like being underwater without an oxygen tank. It felt like every
minute was an hour," Klein said.

The failure appeared to affect users on all U.S. wireless carriers from
about 3:30 p.m. to 6:50 p.m., an AT&T spokesman said. It was not clear that
it affected all BlackBerry subscribers and appeared to only involve e-mail,
representatives from AT&T and Sprint Nextel said. Phone service on the
devices was not affected, a Sprint spokesman said.

Research in Motion, which makes the ubiquitous handheld device and operates
the BlackBerry e-mail servers, did not respond to phone messages and e-mails
seeking comment.

It was the second major failure for RIM in less than a year. Last April, the
company's e-mail service was interrupted for several hours overnight. The
company later said its system crashed during a software upgrade to the
servers that run the BlackBerry network. The cause of yesterday's blackout
was not known.

The BlackBerry has had a loyal following, particularly among business users,
since its introduction nine years ago. RIM has 12 million subscribers for
its BlackBerry service worldwide and about 8 million in North America.

The interruption yesterday may have inconvenienced some customers, but
faithful users such as Klein say the glitch has not changed their view of
the service.

"It couldn't have come at a worse time for me, but I think it was just an
occasional problem," he said. "I'm too wedded to the technology at this
point to change."