Looks like RIM's backbone is creaking with another report on a partial outage that affects North American carriers, where BlackBerry Messenger and web browser alongside apps that rely on a data connection being unable to hook up, although the all important email seems to work fine. It is also pretty apparent now that not all carriers and subscribers are affected.
maker of the popular BlackBerry line of smartphones, confirmed an email outage earlier today. The issue has since been resolved, and RIM reports that service is back to normal, but it's never good for marketing or public relations to have the word "outage" come up.
In an e-mailed statement, RIM noted "Some customers may still experience delays as email queues are processed." The statement summed up with "RIM is continuing to investigate the cause of the issue and apologizes for any inconvenience."
The outage only impacted e-mail service. Affected users were still able to place phone calls, use text messaging, and surf the Web. That is good news for most, but little consolation for users who were perhaps anxiously awaiting an urgent e-mail at the time.
Users don't like outages in general, though. People have been more than a little irate at outages by Google, and particularly riled up when Microsoft and Danger lost all data for T-Mobile Sidekick users. In an increasingly competitive smartphone market, outages are a black eye that doesn't win any fans.
