vallierojas: Satisfaction with BlackBerry crumbles as server problems keep users in dark

Company could lose the confidence of businesses after high-profile customers voice irritation at outage

Lisa Simpson took her BlackBerry with her when she went to help out at the Brownies in her home town in Devon on Tuesday evening; she was hoping to get confirmation of a client for her freelance translation services. No message came ? but when she got home there was an email on her computer saying: "As you didn't reply, we had to give the work to someone else."

Simpson missed out on �300 of work ("particularly disappointing, because they would have been a new client") but is only is one of tens of millions around the world feeling the effects of a dramatic computer crash at the UK headquarters of Research In Motion (RIM) in Slough, Berkshire, this week.

The crash means that, at times, emails and messages cannot be sent or received. Web browsing is also intermittent.

Consumers such as Simpson have not been the only ones affected: for thousand of bankers around Europe awaiting the latest news about the euro, silence has not been golden. Their BlackBerrys have at times not been relaying messages.

Engineers at Slough have been working since 11am on Monday to try to restore the service after the equivalent of a "Chernobyl moment" ? where an experiment with a crucial system goes horribly wrong.

For the Russian nuclear reactor it was an after-hours test which blew the roof off the building and exposed its radioactive core; for RIM, the Guardian understands, it was a botched attempt to upgrade the software and hardware that encrypts messages, emails and web traffic for users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, and which has now exposed RIM to furious demands that it get its act together ? or see customers desert it in the only regions where it had growth.

But the attempts to fix the problem only seem to make it worse. By midday on Wednesday the disruption had spread to North America ? including Canada, where Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis founded RIM in 1984. They are now the co-chief executives and co-chairmen of a business that once challenged Nokia as the leader in the smartphone business. But it has recently seen its shares, revenues and profits all fall as Apple and phones using Google's Android software have taken over, and the twin bosses are under threat from shareholders.

As for the outage, "the really worrying thing is that we don't know how long it's going to take," said one business that deals with RIM. "They're saying tomorrow morning ? but they were saying that yesterday." The timing is more embarrassing for RIM because it comes in the week Apple releases a major update to its mobile phone software, which brings a capability called "iMessage" to compete directly with RIM's BlackBerry Messenger.

The danger is that RIM's reputation ? among both young connected consumers and corporations that each make up about half of its 70 million users worldwide ? may also be permanently damaged.

"For big companies this can be crippling if they have people relying on their BlackBerry to get email," said Carolina Milanesi, smartphone analyst at the research company Gartner ? who says she is relieved that she is not travelling on Thursday: "company policy is that we have to use a BlackBerry for email. I would be scrambling to get to a wireless connection so I could use my iPhone."

Milanesi thinks big companies might be considering their options, as Apple's iPhone has notably begun to make inroads into businesses that were previously RIM's stronghold. The revelation that tens of millions of users are relying on a single system in Slough could have businesses reconsidering their reliance on it.

The encryption of messages, and RIM's private system, which avoids international roaming costs, had made BlackBerry highly attractive both to businesses and consumers. But on Wednesday users such as Alastair Campbell and the cricketer Kevin Pietersen expressed anger at the delay. Campbell criticised RIM's silence, and inadvertently coined a new word. "Day 3 of blackberry black-out," he tweeted. "Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. handling so far woefuk." (Later, he added: "Woefuk was indeed a typing error. If it catches on, I will claim it.")

Pietersen threatened to change phone ? a move many said they were considering.

RIM however has said barely anything to explain the problem, issuing brief statements until Stephen Bates, its UK & Ireland chief executive, told a group of developers on Wednesday morning: "We thought we had found the problem [that caused the outage] but had not. We are working around the clock to get to the bottom of the problem."

He added: "We are working night and day to solve the outage. Our apologies to all our customers." The delays, he said, were "not acceptable", and the "server issues are regarded with high focus". RIM, he said, "is not going to stop until they get to the end of the problem".

David Yach, CTO for Software, promised RIM will not resort to deleting the huge backlog of messages that has built up. "All the email will be delivered," he said.

Sources with knowledge of RIM's systems suggest the problem has been brewing for years. In mid-2007, when the introduction of Apple's iPhone helped drive the explosion in smartphone sales, RIM had 5.5 million subscribers. At the end of this August it had 70 million, a 12-fold growth. But former staff say the company only began thinking about how to rewrite its core systems to deal with its massive growth in the past few years ? and that the outage this week is the result.

Simpson said she would be prepared to stick with RIM ? for now. "I'm really anti-iPhone. I think the BlackBerry's fantastic. I'm giving them one week. If it carries on then I might have to get an Android phone."

Tweets of rage

Lord Sugar, who as he pointed out created one of the first really big British PC businesses, was infuriated by the outage. "In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such a outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can't understand why it's taking so long to fix."

He added: "All my companies use BB's, every one so reliant on getting email on the move, people don't know if they are coming or going," noting too that "I'll tell you what even without knowing the ins and outs of what's wrong. If it was my company it would have been fixed by now." To the suggestion that this is an "eggs in one basket" problem, he replied: "Yes but this is kids' stuff with backup servers, I just don't get it ? servers are always conking out, you have contingency plans." It would cause, he suggested, "Massive damage to their image. Corporate users must be going bananas."

Kevin Pietersen, England cricketer, moved from frustration to a threat to leave. On Monday he tweeted: "Can someone at Blackberry PLEASE sort out this BBM problem!!! PLEASE!!!"

By Wednesday, the tone was more threatening: "Android, iPhone & Vertu are being investigated this afternoon ? Blackberry has made me SO grumpy."

A tweet by Jemima Khan on Tuesday was more plaintive: "Blackberry down again ? anyone else?"

But it was the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell who tore into the company for its lack of communication. On Monday he began: "'my blackberry' trending ought to be good news for blackberry in these techie days. But it's not. My blackberry in blackout mode. Sort pls." Soon his annoyance was showing: "Have Blackberry said what if anything is going on to fix the problem?" The lack of response led to rising frustration. "Amazed that Blackberry can be so good at Blackberry stuff, but so bad at crisis comms to customers #getmybloodyblackberrybackon"

Soon it was a whipping boy, in a way former Labour ministers might find familiar. "Am going to Macedonia tomorrow. speaking about crisis comms. Many thanks Blackberry for providing topical example of how not to do it." He then accidentally invented a new word ? "woefuk" ? to describe RIM's handling of the situation. "day 3 of blackberry blackout. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. handling so far woefuk."

He didn't relent: "On a serious note, can someone at @blackberryuk explain WTF is going on, and what you are doing to fix, explain and recompense?"His final question - before he flew: "@blackberrryUK WTF is going on and when will it end and why has your handling plan been so woefuk?"

Charles Arthur

Charles Arthur

Juliette Garside