Outages
 

Hey everyone

I've been a diehard Blackberry user for almost 3 years now, but I'm thinking about using something else.

These outages that keep coming up are getting annoying. I want something that is going to be stable and not go down. Lately there have been a few BIS outages and I know they're not that long, but who's to say that one day we won't have another outage like the one we had last year or so, where we had no service for a day or 2. It's not very reassuring that we have to depend on a server that is not run/maintained by our respective service providers.

I'd just like some feedback from everyone, if anyone's had similar thoughts or anything.

You already have it, admittedly for the past three years.
If you're asking for 100% uptime, then perhaps you need to move to Fantasia.

Outages happen... for every carrier... for every system... for every network.
The grass is not greener on the other side.

Next time your BlackBerry has an outage... which will happen... take that time to read a book or something.

Personally,

I'd much rather trust someone whose entire business is dependant on keeping their servers up than a small IT department whose main concern is on the business hardware/software with BlackBerry service as a non-critical component. I think they've done a pretty good job overall. The phone still works, its just the data that goes down during the outages. Quite frankly, i have a higher regard for RIM than i do for AT&T.

I don't recall a "few" nor any that lasted "a day or two".

Your carrier is normally the reason for the local outages you might have experienced. RIM has had, I think two significant BIS outages, last April and last month. There was one other major BES outage, I believe. While they are quite inconvenient, very much so, I think you are exaggerating and/or recreating a different version of those two outages.

Sure it is annoying. But my car, my home electrical, my cable, AND my wife have had longer outages than RIM itself.

I know that nothing is up for 100% of the time, I don't expect that. It just seems to me that Blackberry seems to have outages more than other devices, mainly because they rely on RIM servers.

I do love my Blackberry, I'm not a helpless addict who can't peel himself away from the thing for 5 minutes, but I am a "fanboy" I guess you could say. If Telus goes down for example, then every device on their network will be out of commission. But if RIM goes down, a Telus Palm or WM device or phone will still work.

Any reason why RIM outages have become more frequent? Only thiing I can think of is the influx of new users because of, for example, Telus' $15 unlimited data plan (on device usage) and other carriers who have launched $15 unlimited email/im plans as well.

I remember in late 2005, early 2006 when I worked for Rogers Blackberry support, there was something going that lasted a couple days where people's BIS accounts weren't polling and they couldn't get into the web client. It caused us to get lots of calls and it was an issue with the RIM Relay server. I don't remember exactly how long it was but that's just one example.

Sounds like you need to talk to Rogers. You bought the CSR line "blame RIM, not us"?

Well I'm on Telus now, not Rogers. Rogers is evil. lol

I subscribe to the RIM Outages mailing list and they've been more frequent as of late and it's just alarming. It would take a lot to get me to switch to another device, but it's still alarming nonetheless.

oh those have been SCHEDULED maintenance outages. One two weeks ago never happened, was put off until last weekend. And another coming April 12, possibly, for maintenance at 2 am.

Sounds to me like they are growing to handle the issues. I don't like it, but it is better than surprises ATT puts us through.

Over 2 million added subscribers last quarter.....that should say it all.

Hehe yeah I've heard about some of those "surprises". Telus has been very good in terms of outages. I don't remember very many, if any at all, other than a text message delay. It's good the website lets you know about scheduled outages instead of random surprises.

The Telus Curve apparently comes out next week so I'm looking forward to getting that. Just wanted to reassure myself about these outages before I spent the money. :)

The DataOutages.com mail list serves a good purpose, but with that comes the notice of a scheduled maintenance outage that you likely would not have even know about otherwise since they are usually between ~2-6 am in the morning.

You are a brave man, sir!

At least someone caught my lowly attempt at humor. :)