So what gives with Blackberry? Yet another e-mail outage for crackberry addicts in the US, only the second major outage in 10 months according news sources (I actually count three, but then who’s counting? One is one too many).

What’s worse is that people can’t seem to agree on how long the outage has been going on, or even if it’s still underway. According to Blackberry:

RIM said in a later statement that data services in the Americas experienced delays on late Monday afternoon, around 3.30 p.m. Eastern time, but were restored in the early evening at around 6.30 p.m.

But some users claim the outage began as early as Saturday, February 8, and some are still complaining that they’re out today.

This has been beaten to death on other blogs and news sites, but I think it bears repeating: these outages indicate that something is VERY wrong with RIM’s strategy of centralizing their push e-mail solution. All of North America’s Blackberry users – regardless of whether they’re on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Fido, Rogers, Telcel, Pegaso or wherever – are relying on a single data center in Waterloo, Ontario. Government agencies are especially heavy users of Blackberry services, and I bet it’s more than just an inconvenience to them when the services go offline.

Haven’t we learned by now that a distributed network of data centers, or at least a backup data center that’s geographically isolated from the first, is a prudent idea?

For those blackberry users who are interested (or even those who just want to gawk at their crackberry-addicted friends when the lights go out), there is a cottage industry of sorts in documenting Blackberry network outages, and distributing alerts to those who are suddenly left wondering why their e-mail pals don’t love them anymore. Dataoutages.com is a website solely focused on cataloging and reporting Blackberry network outages, and has a miling list that anyone can subscribe to. Given the frequency that these outages are starting to happen, it might be a good idea for crackberry addicts everywhere to join up and be informed.