After three days of technical glitches, BlackBerry smartphone-maker Research In Motion (RIM) on Thursday said its services had been restored in India and its operations were fast reaching the normal level. Ruling out the possibility of their popular messenger, enterprise or other global Internet-based services being hacked, the Canadian firm said it was working to prevent future outages.
“All services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement. We continue to monitor the situation 24x7 to ensure ongoing stability,” RIM said. Apart from India, where RIM has around 10 lakh subscribers, BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Canada, Latin America and the U.S. have also been facing problems in accessing email, messenger and other online services for the past four days due to a core switch failure in the RIM infrastructure.
In a separate message posted on the company's website, Chief Information Officer Robin Bienfait said: “Email systems are operating and we are continuing to clear any backlogged messages. Support teams are working to minimise the impact on our customers...We are working to restore normal service levels in all markets as quickly as we can. I want to first apologise for the service interruptions and delays many of you have been experiencing this week...We are doing everything in our power to restore regular service everywhere and to restore your trust in us.” However, experts believe that the current crisis will affect RIM's position in the Indian telecom market, where BlackBerry users have been rising in numbers. “A three-day outage is highly inconvenient and they should reach their customers more actively either through various communication modes or social media to allay consumer fears,” said Vishal Tripathi, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner.
