BlackBerry blues continue

DUBAI — The BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) was down for the third consecutive day with users unable to access the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), e-mail and related online services.

The only relief to thousands of BlackBerry users in the UAE was the compensation announced by telecom operators du and etisalat. For business users, the downtime didn’t make a lot of difference. Ashish Panjabi, COO of Jacky’s Group of Companies, said: “It’s a global issue and consumers know this. However, if I was travelling during this time, I would have been affected severely.”

He added: “I have other handsets which I use, but I rely on the BlackBerry Messenger to send messages to suppliers and sales teams, which saves a lot of time. Since the services went offline, I’ve been making calls to reach the same people.”

Telecom operators du and etisalat announced compensations for BlackBerry users early on Wednesday.

On its official twitter feed, du said: “In light of the recent degradation that millions of BlackBerry users in the UAE have experienced, we’ve decided to compensate our customers.”

Individual and enterprise users will be offered three days free service while postpaid and prepaid customers subscribed to the ‘unlimited national BB’ package on du will receive Dh13. Du users on the international BlackBerry plan will receive Dh26.

Etisalat users will also be compensated according to a statement issued by the company. “BlackBerry prepaid customers will receive the equivalent of three days usage free-of-charge credited to their accounts within 24 hours of the RIM problem,” said the statement.

The compensation will be adjusted on the subscriber’s monthly bill.

A few users in the UAE briefly regained access to e-mail services on their BlackBerry devices at 12 noon on Wednesday. The messenger services continue to remain down.

According to a statement issued by Research In Motion Ltd., the messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure.

“Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed,” read the statement.

Angry customers voiced their concern as the services continued to remain sporadic throughout Wednesday. “I feel disconnected from the world. It’s acceptable if the issue was just for a day but it’s been three days and we still don’t know when the service will resume. If they are experiencing issues, they should inform their customers,” said Heena Makhijani, a university student.

Most enterprise users prefer using an international BlackBerry package as it offers a data package which is cheaper when compared to standalone international roaming charges.

muaz@khaleejtimes.com