Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

RIM co-CEO issues public apology for ongoing BlackBerry outage [updated]

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:31PM EST
BGR

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis on Thursday issued a public apology to BlackBerry subscribers around the world following a major service outage that has now entered its fourth day. “I apologize for the service outages this week,” Lazaridis said in a video posted to YouTube by RIM. “We’ve let many of you down.” He continued, “You expect better from us. And I expect better from us.” After initially believing the issue causing the outage was resolved late Monday, service interruptions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa persisted on Tuesday when RIM explained that the outage was due to a core switch failure. RIM said on Wednesday that a massive backlog of emails was causing tremendous strain on its systems as the service outage spilled over into India as well as North and South America. “We are working around the clock to fix this,” the Lazaridis said, continuing to explain that the company is now approaching “normal BlackBerry service levels” in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa. The co-chief warned that RIM is not out of the woods yet, however, and there may be some continued instability as the company works toward fully resolving the issues. Lazaridis’ video apology follows below.

UPDATE: Mike Lazaridis announced on a press call at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time Thursday morning that all BlackBerry services have been restored.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.