Grahamstown Blackberry users are among millions of people worldwide who were sent into a spin this week due to the cellphone outages.
“I rely heavily on my Blackberry to receive and send emails to keep up with the proverbial hustle and bustle of student life,” said a frustrated Andrew Edwards who has used a Blackberry since last year.
“I don’t get out much due to work commitments so I depend on the social networking and instant messaging (BBM) functions in order to have a social life,” said Edwards, who finds it difficult to communicate and co-ordinate things without the smartphone on which he has become so reliant.
Grahamstown Blackberry users are among millions of people worldwide who were sent into a spin this week due to the cellphone outages.
“I rely heavily on my Blackberry to receive and send emails to keep up with the proverbial hustle and bustle of student life,” said a frustrated Andrew Edwards who has used a Blackberry since last year.
“I don’t get out much due to work commitments so I depend on the social networking and instant messaging (BBM) functions in order to have a social life,” said Edwards, who finds it difficult to communicate and co-ordinate things without the smartphone on which he has become so reliant.
Many users have become so dependent on the smartphone for their social lives, that the blackouts have caused considerable anger and resulted in many venting their annoyance on social media sites such as Twitter.
One tweet from a Springbok fan and Blackberry user @followthebounce said “I buy an Ipad and Steve Jobs dies. I buy a Blackberry and BBM dies. Does Bryce Lawrence sell anything?” This was just one of millions of tweets about Blackberry that has had it trending in the top ten worldwide topics on the social networking site for most of the week.
The first service cut was experienced on Monday morning when users of the Blackberry smartphone were unable to browse the web, use instant Blackberry Messenger (BBM) or access other internet services such as emails, Twitter and Facebook.
After the initial blackout took place at around 11.30am on Monday, the Blackberry manufacturing company, Research in Motion (RIM), managed to restore Blackberry services later that night. But, the joy was short lived as most users experienced a second system failure around midday the following day.
The problem is said to have originated in Slough, in the United Kingdom, where the RIM data centre is situated. The core switch failure in Slough caused Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) glitches in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. A transition to a back-up switch did not function as tested, causing a large backlog of data, said RIM. The outage then spread to the US and Canada on Wednesday putting increased pressure on the manufacturers to fix the problem.
There were several complaints from users on Twitter, but very few responses from RIM who have remained mute for most of the blackout. One of the only responses from Blackberry was via their official Twitter account on Tuesday which said “Message delays were caused by a core switch failure in RIM’s infrastructure. Now being resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience.” This has left several service providers such as Vodacom with the unenviable task of sending out messages to their clients apologizing for the BIS failure affecting their network.
With the crisis having spread to the US on Wednesday, RIM seemed to step things up a notch. The services were restored at around 7am on Thursday morning (South African time), yet RIM had still failed largely to communicate the blackout with its 70 million users worldwide. Many users were in the dark all week and would periodically check their phones in the hope that a flashing red light would appear to indicate that they had a message.
But the return of the BIS services on Thursday morning has eased the pain of South Africa’s two million users. “It feels like Christmas! I can now return to normal. It’s such a relief to have BBM up and running again,” said an elated Guy Brukman who has been using a Blackberry since February.
Blackberry and RIM’s lack of communication has also lead to a loss of confidence with investors. Blackberry’s shares dropped 2.2% on the New York stock exchange yesterday and global sales are down from 12.1 million last year to 10.6 million this year.
Top 10 other Twitter quotes:
@tuck_box22 : “Bryce Lawrence is still convinced there is no breakdown at Blackberry”
@M5_Chocolat: “I’m sure most of y’all were twitching like cocaine addicts in need of a quick fix cause your BB(s) were practically useless for 3 days”
@ELPINTO_ : “Dear Blackberry, Thanks for honouring Steve Jobs’ death with silence for 3 continuous days. Sincerely, Apple & iPhone.”
@rabbidavidmason : “Blackberry server crashed leaving hundreds of teenagers wandering aimlessly around”
@inspiringlouis: “What did one Blackberry user say to another? Nothing.”
@dionneoffical: “The way I got so happy when blackberry went back to normal shows how sad I am”
@podakuni: “So I bought an iPhone, Steve Jobs dies. I bought the Blackberry, BBM dies. Now going to buy the album of Justin Bieber!”
@TayloerHerringPR: “This Blackberry crisis as just been upgraded to catastrophe status”
@followthebounce: “Bryce Lawrence is to issue an official apology all South African rugby fans – over BBM…”
@followthebounce: “Much like Bakkies Botha at the World Cup, Blackberry is down again…”
