RIM Still Sorry, Still Has No Idea What Happened

That BlackBerry outage that disconnected millions of people from their digital worlds? RIM held a call today to reiterate how very sorry they are. And to reassure its valued customers that it has absolutely no clue why BlackBerry imploded. Nice.

As they’ve said previously, they know what broke: a “dual redundant high capacity core switch” is to blame, which, of course, why wouldn’t it? But they’re still working to determine the root cause, and have no timeframe as to when they might suss it out. Presumably, they have their best mounties on it.

But what, several questioners questioned during the 30-minute gabfest/apologia, does RIM plan to do to make things right for customers? Again, they don’t know. Which is fair, given that the company’s main priority has been restoring basic functionality. Expecting RIM to have also been working on make-goods this whole time would be like expecting a cardiac surgeon to pause mid-bypass to give the patient a facial.

There is good news, though: all service has officially been restored. And while RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Bestille repeatedly cited a 99.97 per cent success rate, which was presumably calculated based on a time period that ended before this week. The question of how many people will bother restoring their accounts, though — especially with such an attractive alternative showing up tomorrow — remains open.