BlackBerry down again: Welcome to the new normal
It’s happened again. BlackBerry users are experiencing yet another service outage today, the latest in a spate of them that seem to be happening with frustrating regulatrity.
This is the new normal for BB users.
And you iPhone users, don’t be so smug. Your AT&T service is hanging on by a thread.
As to the current BlackBerry outage, Research In Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry and runs the service, is typically tightlipped.
“Some Blackberry customers in the Americas are currently experiencing delays in message delivery,” RIM said in a statement. “Our technical teams are actively working to resolve this issue for those impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Real insightful, huh?
You could see this one coming on Twitter and Facebook early this morning as BlackBerry users began twittering their frustration over agonizingly slow service. Then, they all but dried up as service seemed to shut down.
Same thing bhappened a week ago throughout much of North America.
That outage affects Blackberry users on pretty much all the carriers -Sprint Nextel, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Canada’s Rogers. The outage so far appears to be limited to RIM’s consumer-oriented Internet service, not corporate users who use BlackBerry Enterprise Server on the their employer’s computer network.
Why the problems? Because of the overwhelming demand caused by the sending and receiving of data – email, running web applications, GPS, web surfing, streaming video and the ever incteasing new online services we access from our phones.
AT&T has also been plagued by inctreases in dropped calls, stalled service and the like because of the massively popular iPhone, particlarly in areas like San Francsiso and New York City where the iPhone is required equipment for the upwardly mobile and tech savvy crowd.
The wireless providers may run slick TV ads touting their 3G coverage but the truth is, they’re being overwhelmed by the huge demands caused by mobile phones that pack more power than personal desktop computers did just a few years ago.
Expect complaints, outages and service issues to get nothing but worse in the next few weeks, especially as hundreds of thousands of new BlackBerry and iPhone users come online with handsets they get as Christmas presents. And I’m betting that one of the big issues we’re going to hear about in 2010 is data disruptions on mobile networks.
