RIM seems to be learning very quickly that when it rains, it pours. Word of a BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) outage quickly began making the rounds this morning, leaving (once) loyal customers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East without email and web access.
This is the second outage RIM has dealt with in as many months: their popular BBM service went down this past September, shortly after the company released their disappointing quarterly financials.
For what it’s worth, it’s business as usual for corporate users as BlackBerry Enterprise services don’t seem to have suffered the same fate.
In usual RIM fashion, they’ve acknowledged the issue through their official Twitter account, but they’re keeping quiet when it comes to what caused the outage or how people are currently being affected. A little legwork by The Telegraph points to a server at Slough as being the likely culprit as all three regions affected by the outage are all served by the Slough data center. There’s still no ETA for a fix, but some users are reporting that service is slowly being restored so the wait may soon be over.
https://twitter.com/#!/BlackBerryHelp/status/123437227324870658
BlackBerry users the world over are understandably miffed at RIM, and who knows how events like this will shape the Canadian company’s future. Their stock price recently hit a new five year low, and these outages aren’t likely to instill customers with much confidence. It’s up to RIM to fix things, dust themselves off, and keeping working, but company morale has to be taking a beating right now.