BlackBerry outage comes to U.S., Baltimore
I just got an email from our corporate parent's help desk notifying us of a BlackBerry outages affecting email, text messaging and Internet service.
How many other corporate IT departments are sending out such an email across the U.S. this morning? And how many municipal governments, who rely on BlackBerrys for critical communications, are also affected?
In Baltimore, the city employees' BlackBerry services are down, according to Rico Singleton, in a brief email. He did not provide a number for city workers affected.
Reuters reports that Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, is saying that some clients are experiencing outages in the Americas. It's the third day of outages around the world for the Canadian company, and a serious setback for its legions of business customers who rely on these smartphones for communications.
Search for "BlackBerry outage" on Twitter to find remarks and other news articles about the topic.
For you loyal BlackBerry users out there, is this outage the last straw? Will you switch to iPhone or Android or Microsoft phones?
This is an archived version of the technology blog. For updated coverage, see the current baltTech location: baltimoresun.com/balttech
Comments
As far as Blackberry is concerned, they will still have the corporate market locked up. At the company I work for, we are testing iPhones and Android phones for possible use, but the security (or rather, lack of security) that a Blackberry provides remains a serious sticking point when it comes to corporate email usage. Add to that issues with handling encrypted email and the possible encryption of data on the device, and you end up with an unsatisfactory alternative to the Blackberry.
******
** I thought iPhones had made great leaps and bounds in beefing up security. - Gus **
Posted by: Raymond Lang | October 12, 2011 12:07 PM
I'm very seriously considering an Android phone over an IPhone. The one thing is keeping me from it is that a lot of Droids don't have Keyboards. I love my keyboard on Blackberry.
Posted by: Tom S | October 12, 2011 4:29 PM