Blackberry service 'is improving'

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
13 October 2011 Last updated at 08:22 GMT Stephen Bates, RIM UK: "The back-up system did not operate in the way we would expect"

Blackberry's owner RIM said that its services "have improved significantly", following a three-day global blackout.

Millions of customers worldwide had their messaging and email service disrupted with many turning to Twitter to express their anger.

RIM put the ongoing problems down to "backlog issues", following a system failure.

Users began to report loss of services mid-morning on 10 October and the problems spread around the world.

On Thursday, RIM issued a statement saying services across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India "have improved significantly".

"We continue to monitor the situation 24x7 to ensure ongoing stability," the update on its website said.

The firm is keen to be seen as sorting the problems swiftly, following confusion earlier in the week when it said services were back to normal, only to be contradicted by frustrated customers.

Robin Bienfait, chief information officer of RIM, the Canada-based owner of Blackberry, issued an apology for the ongoing issues.

"You've depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we're letting you down. We are taking this very seriously and have people around the world working around the clock to address this situation," he said.

"We believe we understand why this happened and we are working to restore normal service levels in all markets as quickly as we can."

It blamed the ongoing issues on a backlog of emails to Europe from Asia and the Americas, following a "core switch failure" in its infrastructure.

"Clearly we have a backlog in Europe... as you can imagine, with the global reach of Blackberry and people using it to contact others around the world, there's a lot of messages to Europe from Asia and the Americas," RIM software vice president David Yach told a press conference in Ottawa, Canada.

"Over time that backlog has built up and affected our other systems."

'Data backlog'

Many tweeters called on the phone firm to "sort out" the problems and get the network running again.

RIM eventually explained what had caused the problems in the first place.

"The messaging and browsing delays... in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," a company statement said.

"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."

The server problems are believed to have originated at RIM's UK data centre in Slough.

The "issues" left many Blackberry owners only able to text and make calls.

BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones: "Blackberry has so many high profile users who are complaining about the crash"

Such a major failure will come as unwelcome news to RIM, which has been losing market share to smartphone rivals - in particular Apple's iPhone.

Many corporate clients have switched to the device after Apple made a concerted effort to improve its support for secure business email systems.

Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said the timing of the outages was bad for RIM.

"The current situation with the Blackberry outages couldn't come at a worse time for RIM, following some harsh criticism in recent months," he said.

Such crashes may lead RIM and others to "re-evaluate their reliance on centralised servers and instead look to investing in more corporately controlled servers", he added.

But he thinks customers will stick with the firm despite current frustrations.

"It will take more than just a couple of collapses to persuade loyal consumers of Blackberry services to look for alternatives," he said.

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Could Romney Private-Sector Resume Trump GOP Foes' Public Service?

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AppId is over the quota

For nearly every other career out there, on-the-job experience tends to be the best way to hone the skills necessary to get ahead. But for politicians, that might not be the case.

That's the message that former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney has been trying to get across, anyway, as he sells his resume to the public for a chance at the White House in 2012. Taking a jab at both President Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, his top foe of the moment in the bid for the GOP's presidential nomination, Romney on Tuesday made sure to highlight his private-sector creds over his competitors' public-sector pasts. "I am a conservative businessman. I have spent most of my life outside of politics, dealing with real problems in the real economy," he said in his speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in San Antonio. "Career politicians got us into this mess and they simply don't know how to get us out!"

For Romney, who dropped from first to second place in national polls after Perry joined the race, this could be a smart way to distinguish himself from the pack of current and former legislators he's up against. [Read about Romney's political odds in the South.]

Lately, as he travels the campaign trail and attacks Obama's jobs policies, Romney's been careful to emphasize his 25 years at Bain Capital, an investment firm based in Boston. While at Bain, Romney was able to make once-struggling small businesses into familiar household names, like the Staples office supply company, for example, or the Sports Authority athletic equipment chain. Compared to Obama, who began his career as a community organizer and law professor before stepping from the Illinois State Senate, to the U.S. Senate, to the White House, or Perry, who has been involved in Texas politics since 1985 and is the state's longest-serving governor, Romney can safely say his quarter century at Bain gives him more years in the private sector than either.

That comparative advantage as a successful, multimillionaire businessman could certainly play well for Romney given the current American political culture, says Thomas Patterson, professor of government and the press at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "That particular argument probably resonates more in this country with this electorate than it would in a lot of other places, in part because we have such a steep tradition and affection for private enterprise, and we're more skeptical about government. So if there's a bias attitudinally in this country, it's a bias toward the private sector," Patterson says. [Read how Romney's wealth could be a problem for him in the 2012 presidential election.]

But, even with a general affinity for capitalism, it's still unclear whether Romney's type of CEO-style business experience would translate well into the role of the nation's commander in chief. Similarly, it's not at all proven that being a career politician, like Perry, is such a bad thing either. According to Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, being a career politician, as Romney refers to them, could be seen as a major asset for someone seeking the presidency, and especially at a time when legislative politics are as contentious as they are in Washington. "What a career politician understands that someone who's new to politics and unpracticed at it doesn't understand is that we often agree on the goal, but we very rarely agree on the way to get there. So the hard work of politics is getting to a point where we can agree on how to get to a goal that everyone wants," she says. "There are a lot of benefits to having spent a career in politics, [namely] being practiced at the art of bargain or compromise, or becoming an expert in a policy area." [Read more about the 2012 presidential election.]

Not to mention, those coming straight from the private sector have rarely, since the start of the 20th century, made a successful run at the White House. In fact, according to Patterson, the last person to get close was Wendell Wilkie, who won the Republican nomination in 1940. Of course, Romney does have a full four-year term as Massachusetts governor to help him overcome that historical obstacle and segue from the executive boardroom to the Oval Office.

Whether his attacks on career politicians will be good for him or not will become clearer as the race progresses, but his emphasis on his own background and such natural differences between himself and other candidates should ultimately score Romney some points. "You can't present yourself as something you're not. He's not a career politician, he's a private-sector guy, so he has to leverage that as a strength," says Vavreck. "Romney is just doing what any candidate would do. He's trying to paint his characteristics as a strength."

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