BlackBerry blackout spreads to Caribbean

Arguably as frightening as an electricity blackout, the BlackBerry service outage in Europe -- which affected e-mail, internet services and the all-important BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) -- spread to North America and the Caribbean last week, but with less impact there, due to quick communication by the mobile providers to customers.

According to Jason Corrigan, Commercial Director for Digicel Jamaica, "Due to an issue with RIM, BlackBerry customers across Central America and the Caribbean experienced delays in browsing, sending and receiving emails and with BlackBerry messenger."

Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian makers of BlackBerrys, had advised that the issue was impacting all operators across the region, he said.

"In an effort to continue to deliver the best service to our customers, our technical team worked closely with RIM to provide frequent updates on the issue as RIM worked to resolve it," Corrigan said.

Kalando Wilmoth, regional head of corporate communications for telecommunications company LIME, said all markets were affected but once the company was made aware of the issue, it went on the offensive to notify subscribers and explain what was happening. "We did a lot of immediate -- as immediate as we could — response, he said.

LIME made use of its social network platforms, Facebook and Twitter, as well as traditional media to inform its customers. "We sent out sms blasts (text messages), had radio public service announcements and did interviews (in Jamaica and in some other territories)", Wilmoth said.

There aren't many outages each year and this one was particularly challenging as it had technical difficulties and was "clearly not normal", he said.

LIME currently provides services in 13 territories regionally.

Digicel's commercial director also said RIM advised on Thursday that "as of 9:00 am that morning full BlackBerry service had been restored and that their Support teams continue to monitor the situation to ensure ongoing stability."

RIM has since apologised for the system's failure. Robin Bienfait, the smartphone company's chief information officer, said "You've depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we're letting you down".

Problems with a link in RIM's European infrastructure on Monday failed, highlighting problems with its back up system which also didn't work. The system's failure led to a backlog of messages and emails from across Europe, which then affected RIM's data service for its 70 million Blackberry subscribers worldwide.

RIM, which only last week launched its new line of Blackberry 7 devices in the Caribbean, has been struggling in recent times to maintain its market share in the face of competition from other smartphones, particularly the iPhone series from Apple.