Research In Motion Finally Addresses Outage Issue

It’s two days too late but at least Blackberry maker Research in Motion is no longer keeping customers in the dark about their recent network outage.

Speaking with Pocket-lint the company says the outage was triggered by a “core switch failure” and while a backup was available that switch didn’t work properly which triggers a “large backlog” while e-mail and other messages were arriving but couldn’t be processed.

According to Research in Motion officials they are currently working to sort through the backlog as “quickly as possible” although they still don’t have an estimated time for when the outage will be officially resolved.

RIM did not address how the system came back online and was then shut down again shortly afterwards.

While network outages have occurred in the past it’s rare that they last such a longer period of time.

The network outage couldn’t have come at a worst time for RIM as their revenues continue to shrink while the iPhone 4S is getting set to arrive.

As Electronista points out:

By its nature, the BlackBerry ties many basic services like e-mail, messaging, and others to monolithic servers. If RIM encounters a failure, it often reduces users to just basic features. Android and iPhone work more directly and can still be almost fully functional even if they lose a key service.

It’s time like these that make me happy I use an iPhone 4. Are you pissed off about the Blackberry outage?