Etisalat and Du to compensate BlackBerry customers

UAE mobile operators Etisalat and Du have both announced that they will compensate BlackBerry users for the recent disruption to their services.

Both operators have said they will compensate BlackBerry users on both pre-pay and post pay accounts. Prepaid customers will receive the equivalent of three days usage, free-of-charge and credited to their account within 24 hours, while for postpaid customers, the compensation will be adjusted in their monthly bill.

“Keeping our customers satisfied is a priority for us and given the exceptional and unprecedented circumstances, we are compensating our BlackBerry users to demonstrate our care for their loyal and ongoing custom,” said Matthew Willsher, CMO at Etisalat.

Meanwhile, Du said in a statement: “In light of the recent degradation that millions of BlackBerry users in the UAE and many parts of the world have experienced over the past few days, which was out of our control, and as gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused, we have decided to compensate our customers.”

According to RIM, the messaging and browsing delays experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure.

Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said on a conference call.

As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and RIM and its operator partners are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as soon as possible.