[October 14, 2011] BlackBerry users back online Tweet Oct 14, 2011 (Gulf Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- BLACKBERRY users in Bahrain were celebrating yesterday, after its services came back online after four days of disruption. Manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) announced services had been restored globally after a technical failure caused a build-up of messages in the RIM network, triggering problems affected many of the firm's 70 million subscribers globally. The popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, as well as e-mail, Twitter and other features were among those to go down. Bahraini Lamya Hasan was relieved to be back online, saying she had felt disconnected and didn't realise how much she relied on her phone to keep up to date with friends and latest developments. "It was very boring and quiet, it's like you feel isolated from your social circuit, you can't see friends' updates and where they are going," she told the GDN. "If I am going to be late home, I usually send a quick BBM to my family, but instead I had to send them a text message, which takes longer because you have to search and find their mobile number." Ms Hasan said the breakdown of BlackBerry services meant she couldn't keep up to date on local news because she wasn't receiving BBM broadcasts and couldn't access her Twitter account. "You feel as though you are out of the social network. You don't feel it has an impact on your life until it is cut off," she explained. "No picture updates, nothing, you don't know what is going on in other people's lives. You miss spying around and getting latest gossip." Student Bahraini Habib Ali said he was excited to have some services up and running again, especially because he had been disconnected for 25 days before the disruption for not paying his bill. "It was bad timing because I paid my bill and then the service went down," said Mr Ali, who is studying architecture engineering at Kingdom University. "I'm really excited to have it back, I've been BBMing in class all day. "I use it mainly for chatting, nothing important, and I use it for research in class," Mr Ali added. However, some BlackBerry users were happy to have a break from BBM. Social media expert Adel Maymoon said the suspension of services was almost like a holiday. "It was relaxing for three days -- there were no notifications and you don't need to look at your phone every few seconds," he said. "On the second day I put my BlackBerry in my laptop case and forgot about it. "For three days all of the political broadcast stopped and that was a good thing for me, but it was a disadvantage because I couldn't keep in touch with friends and couldn't access my e-mails. "I have an iPhone, but the BlackBerry has an advantage with BBM and instant e-mail which no other phone has." Bahraini Hussein Ali said although he regularly used BBM to keep in touch with friends, he limited it to a certain number of contacts. "I limit my BlackBerry contacts to about 40 close friends and family," he said. "I don't use it for long conversations, I don't like typing that much, I use it for e-mails and I didn't have access to my e-mails during that time. "But actually it was like having a break and you can walk for 10 minutes and people's heads are up, they aren't on their phones all the time. "A lot of people were complaining and depressed, although I didn't get e-mails, it didn't bother me that much." Bahraini Ahmed Al Watani said his company had given him a BlackBerry, but he didn't use it that much because he owned an iPhone. "I'm not that much addicted to BlackBerry, so it was totally fine, it didn't affect me that much and I'm downloading Microsoft Outlook on my iPhone," said Mr Al Watani, who is VIVA billing and collection executive. "The usage of BlackBerry is going down and the trend now is iPhones." Filipino Myla Brioso said she wasn't affected by the disruption because most of her friends used iPhones and she rarely updated her BBM status or sent messages. "To be honest, I don't really use BlackBerry very often because most of my friends have iPhones and my three siblings have iPhones and use Whatsapp," said the mother-of-two. "In the Philippines we send text messages more than here. "I don't update my status on BlackBerry that much, but I use Facebook a lot when I'm at home and I use BlackBerry to see my Facebook." [email protected] ___ (c)2011 the Gulf Daily News (Manama, Bahrain) Visit the Gulf Daily News (Manama, Bahrain) at www.gulf-daily-news.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]