UAE, KSA telcos compensate subscribers for Blackberry outage

UAE, KSA telcos compensate subscribers for Blackberry outage

October 12, 2011 11:39 by Precious de Leon

In a move that just may surprise you given the notorious reputation of their less than desirable customer service, telecoms operators in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are giving customers 3 days free of charge for Blackberry subscribers.
The move is in compensation for the last three days of Blackberry global outage.

It is still unclear whether the Blackberry service will be up and running smoothly from today.

Kipp reported this Wednesday that Mobily announced a similar compensation for its subscribers. There were also reports on Tuesday about Etisalat and Du speaking with RIM on creating a compensation package for its subscribers. A Kippreport reader, @AlexMalouf, has also turned our attention to STC (Saudi Telecom) launching a similar plan with its own subscribers.

This Wednesday, Etisalat and Du, have almost simultaneously announced on their Twitter feeds and afterwards on their Facebook pages that there will be a 3-day compensation for its subscribers.

@EtisalatUAE did a one-liner announcement, followed by related tweets:

While @dutweets outlined the terms of the compensation according to their subscribers’ package:

Besides the Middle East, extensive delays of Blackberry services also hit Europe, Africa and India. Problems reportedly also affected Brazil, Chile and Argentina. A “core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure” has been blamed for the disruption, according to an emailed update from RIM as reported in Emirates 24/7.

Thanks to Kippreport.com readers @bhavishya for giving us a heads up on the Etisalat and Du announcements and @sanjive01 for sharing with us yesterday’s report of the telco operator and RIMs plans for free usage.