Last Thursday, the company that makes BlackBerry smartphones had a problem with its equipment that prevented some users from receiving email on their devices.
Tonight, Research in Motion (RIM) is experiencing a total service outage effecting North and South America. For at least an hour, I’ve been unable to access any data services from my device, including internet service and email.
In the case of BlackBerry, all emails routed to the device travel first through its data center, a setup intended to reduce the load on individual corporate email servers. As the recent problems highlight, however, such a design can have devastating consequences if RIM’s data center goes offline or experiences some other downtime.
One very minor lesson learned: BlackBerry users now know what it’s like to be an iPhone user on AT&WeSuck.
Update: It appears that the problem was resolved around 3:05 EST on December 23 as I received a number of previously-undelivered emails at that early hour.