AT&T Data Network Issues. Yet Another BlackBerry Outage?

on 25 Sep 2007 09:12 AM

AT&T Are you on AT&T? Are you receiving your emails this morning?

8am CST: Reports began coming in early this morning on the CrackBerry & BlackBerry Forums of AT&T users experiencing issues connecting to the AT&T GPRS and EDGE network. AT&T has confirmed they are having problems with their data and data routing and that BlackBerry users may be unable to send or receive messages. Not everyone is experiencing difficulties - I have spoke to a few AT&T BlackBerry-using colleagues and their Berrys are operating just fine. Hopefully you fall into this category and are not affected - but best to be aware of the situation just in case.

Here's a message just received by one our site's moderators from AT&T/Cingular:

Valued Customer,

This e-mail is to inform you of a network problem that MAY affect your Mobile Data Service.

Trouble Ticket Number: N/A
Severity: High
Description of Issue: Recieving calls from Customers unable to connect to GPRS or EDGE with Blackberry devices
Location of Issue: All Regions/ All Markets
Start Time: 9/25/2007 5:25 AM PDT
Symptoms you MAY experience: Blackberry users may be unable to send or receive messages or may have difficulty connecting to the RIM network

Estimated time of repair: Unknown

Technicians are working towards resolution as quickly as possible. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause. Thank you for your patience as we work towards resolving this issue. If you have any questions, please contact Enterprise Technical Support at 888-334-3787+PIN for more information.

Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular — CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

I really hope BlackBerry outages Do Not become a regular thing to blog about. I'll keep this post updated as we learn more. Feel free to keep the CrackBerry community informed of your status by leaving a comment to this post, or sharing it in the CrackBerry forums.

11am CST: Sounds like everything is coming back online for people and the AT&T BlackBerry universe is in alignment once again. GOOD. That's the way it should be.

Filed Under: News & Rumors;

7 Comments

Posted by Dean Winters Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

have not experienced any issues here in Western Massachusetts. keeping my fingers crossed though.

Posted by KangarooAR-15A3 Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

Mine is down, my work emails on my computer are NOT going to my BB.

I am in Houston, TX.

Posted by sayvilleguy Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

I'm in NY. This was happening mid September too: any emails my redirector BB app was trying to send to my BB Curve would sometimes work in seconds, but by 12 noon (I guess when west coast traffic hit the network so entire USA was online) emails via redirector AND emails addressed to my BB's email address (rather than other POP addresses) were not getting through. I'd randomly start to get messages around 8 or 9PM (coincidentally when rest of west coast would leave the office).
I still see these problems, but the work around for me was to stop using BIS redirector and instead use a third party email redirector app (pegasus) and tell it to send to my personal home email address. THAT worked just fine and I got emails in seconds. that mailbox is a POP3 and I was able to set it up on the Curve easily. So it isn't the AT&T network that is the issue, it is the Blackberry Internet Service infrastructure that is failing, due to load. It was built inadequately (obviously) and I guess they never expected to get so much traffic ramp-up but hey, when you come out with 8300, 8320, and 8800 devices you've got to figure traffic will increase. Duhhh. Once a week I go back to BB BIS email redirector and I even manually email my phone from desktop corporate email to BB address... and the probelm is still there. So my workaround seems to work fine though.

Posted by LSterling Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

I thought it was me! I've only had a bb for 4 days and figured I done something wrong! I stopped receiving emails sometime yesterday afternoon. I switched to AT&T so I could get a bb Curve. Hopefully, they will solve the problem soon.

Posted by LSterling Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

I'm in Houston as well.

Posted by DubyaEl Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007 1704 days ago

I didn't have any problems here in Northern VA.

Posted by Anonymous Wednesday, Sep 26, 2007 1703 days ago

why is it taking 7 to 8 minutes for a text message to come around or to pass on...I'm a little pissed off about this situation..:-(((((