Research in Motion, the maker of Blackberry smartphones, was once again under fire due to Monday’s service disruption, the second in a span of 10 months. The outage left customers without Blackberry service for several hours on Monday of this week. Coincidentally, RIM has now just announced its first “push” email server for the home. The new server, just unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, is currently only available in Europe is for personal users of the Blackberry email service. For those who choose to use the server in their homes, Blackberry outages will no longer be a concern – if the server goes down, they have no one but themselves to blame.
The new server, known as the “Unite Server,” uses an always-on computer in the home as the conduit for RIM’s push email service. Instead of connecting directly to RIM’s master servers, a Blackbery smartphone will instead connect to the user’s own computer. Running this service could improve access to mail for personal users, as the server will not be affected by any goings on in RIM’s Blackberry service infrastructure. The Unite Servers will also function as a home media server by helping to manage music, photos, and videos that are transferred to the Blackberry.
The service begins its launch in Spain through subscribers to Telefonica’s Blackberry service plans. Later this year, Unite Servers will be made available to Germany and others, though no word on when they will arrive in North America.
