• Business Week, Thursday, April 19, 2007 11 AM

What does the latest BlackBerry blackout say about Research in Motion? That the wireless services provider's network is operating at capacity? We still don't know, but millions of BlackBerry owners, who depend on the device to stay connected to their work and personal email accounts, stopped receiving messages at around 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday night, lasting until 8 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Sure, it wasn't a terribly long blackout period, and it came after peak work hours, but it may take a while for customers to regain their faith in Canada-based RIM, which failed to hold up its end of the deal during the blackout--in terms of customer service, anyway. RIM's damage control consisted of a brief statement confirming service interruptions in North America, period. Indeed, the lack of information could leave corporate decision makers wondering if this latest BlackBerry blackout is a sign of worse things to come.

It would be one thing if this was the first time, but BlackBerry outages of varying severity occurred in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 and now, 2007. RIM responded to the '05 outage by ensuring customers the problem was fixed by improving the network. Telling customers the same thing may not fly this time--they want explanations.

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