CrackBerry's Crack-Up
last updated: 18 April 2007
US BlackBerry users were left twiddling their scroll thumbs overnight Tuesday as a technical problem on RIM's network floored the mobile email devices for 10 hours straight.
The outage started at around 8pm Eastern time Tuesday and RIM advised network providers that the issue was resolved by 6am Eastern time Wednesday. Further slight delays were experienced through the rest of the day as RIM sent out backlogged emails in batches, the situation made all the worse, no doubt, by the volume of "Subject: Test, Body: Test Hello? Can you see this?" messages.
The BlackBerry earned its nickname 'CrackBerry' from it's highly addictive nature. Indeed, researchers in Britain and America found that users demonstrated symptoms similar to those experienced by alcoholics and drug addicts if separated from their beloved devices.
Reuters quoted one Wall Street analyst who was in "disbelief" that the service was failing. "I have a client that would have paid me with an immediate trade but they couldn't reach their trader because BlackBerry service was down," she said.
While in Washington Joe Shoemaker, communications director for Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, said "I felt like my left arm had been amputated".
And, the blackout may harm RIM's market share as it prides itself on it's highly reliable service and security, selling points it leverages to charge significantly more than it's competitors. On the other hand maybe a night of peace and quiet was just what end users were waiting for, after all who wants to be dealing with work related emails all day every day? Really, who?
The BlackBerry earned its nickname 'CrackBerry' from it's highly addictive nature. Indeed, researchers in Britain and America found that users demonstrated symptoms similar to those experienced by alcoholics and drug addicts if separated from their beloved devices.
Reuters quoted one Wall Street analyst who was in "disbelief" that the service was failing. "I have a client that would have paid me with an immediate trade but they couldn't reach their trader because BlackBerry service was down," she said.
While in Washington Joe Shoemaker, communications director for Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, said "I felt like my left arm had been amputated".
And, the blackout may harm RIM's market share as it prides itself on it's highly reliable service and security, selling points it leverages to charge significantly more than it's competitors. On the other hand maybe a night of peace and quiet was just what end users were waiting for, after all who wants to be dealing with work related emails all day every day? Really, who?