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Blackberry blackouts last week left millions of users without access to email and messaging services, raising questions over the reliance we have on mobile devices as well as the possibility of Blackberry being forced to watch as disgruntled customers migrated to rival devices.

With many businesses heavily invested in Blackberry services, the “outage” made repeated headlines while its manufacturer RIM attracted criticism over its handling of the on-going problems and repeated setbacks.

Of course RIM are not the only tech provider to have suffered widespread crashes this year, with video messaging service Skype and Microsoft’s Office 365 both experiencing newsworthy downtime in recent months.

But it is perhaps because of the widespread, almost subservient relationship that many of us seem to have established with such devices, that Blackberry’s failure has caused such exhaustive comment.

One forum which was reportedly filled with commentators, keen to vent their anger at the inconvenience caused was Twitter – updates to which, one would assume, were being delivered from an alternative device such as their PC which would also have provided access to email.

Despite the calls for compensation, promise of free Apps and the repeated threat of mutiny amongst its customer base, commentators believe that once the service has been fixed and uninterrupted delivery restored, customers will minimise their militant mood and stay put.

Are you a Blackberry user? Where you affected by the recent “outage” and did the experience make you consider ditching Blackberry in favour of a rival device?

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Published by Simon on Tuesday, 18 October 2011 at 3:30 PM