Firm blames BlackBerry network collapse on switch failure

TELECOM NEWS — Users of Blackberry Smart phone services around the world are still suffering from excruciating pain of connecting from their loved ones and disruption of businesses as Research In Motion, RIM, owners of the service are yet to put an end to the network failure which began Monday.

Users woke up Monday morning to experience difficulty in connecting to the services of Blackberry and the problem persisted all through till Tuesday, breaking down communications for those who rely on the network.

However, by Tuesday evening, RIM announced that it had identified “a core switch failure within its infrastructure” which it said was responsible for the Smart phone’s internet blackout. It also promised that it was doing everything possible to arrest the situation.

Meanwhile, RIM had designed the Blackberry services with a back-up which makes sure that if the network fails, users could still access services until the problem is rectified.

Back-up fails

But on this occasion, the company in a statement said: “Although the system is designed to fail over to a back-up switch, the fail-over did not function as previously tested.”

It, however, promised that a large backlog of data was generated which it was working to clear and restore normal service as quickly as possible.

However, for the third consecutive day, BlackBerry users in Nigeria and other African countries, Europe, the Middle East, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are unable to access the internet or use BlackBerry’s popular applications, including BlackBerry Messenger, BBM.

Many users in Nigeria, where Blackberry services are not only becoming a crucial part of business activity but a part of daily life, are complaining bitterly over the failure.

Customers react

Students of different tertiary institutions expressed disappointment that three days down the line, RIM could not permanently fix the problem. They claimed that the failure to connect to loved ones, including parents and guardians in most cases, have left their lives on campus very miserable and dull.

Although the services became slightly normal on Tuesday morning, it however went down again and remained down all through yesterday. The problem is beginning to create institutional questions that may put the Canadian company’s future on shaky grounds.

Shaky grounds

Vanguard gathered that the company’s major shareholders, including Jaguar Financial Corp, have since Tuesday called on the company to form a merger or seek partnership.

The call may not be unconnected to the fear generated by the company’s loss of market share to Apple and Google’s Android devices in 2001.

RIM retrenched about 2,000 employees, almost 10 per cent of its workforce, after suffering loss in both revenue and market share in 2001.

______________

By Prince Osuagwu

-Vanguard