Major outage hits T-Mobile Sidekick users
Outage that began Friday knocked out data service. Microsoft, whose Danger subsidiary powers the Sidekick service, says it has restored service for "critical applications."
Users of T-Mobile's Sidekick have been suffering through a major outage over the past several days that left many without access to the Web or their address books.
Microsoft, whose Danger subsidiary powers the Sidekick service, said it is "working urgently" to deal with the problems, which interrupted data service for most Sidekick users starting at 1:30 a.m. PDT on Friday. The level of disruption has varied, though most users have been affected, Microsoft said.
"We are working around-the-clock to get all our services back online and will continue to post status updates to our valued customers as issues are resolved," Microsoft said. "We thank our customers for their patience and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this disruption has caused."
Microsoft said that, as of 6 a.m. PDT Tuesday, it had restored service "for critical applications including address book and calendar, social media applications, IM, web browsing, media player and camera."
"Our goal is to have all services restored to 100 percent functionality by Thursday; however there may be some exceptions," Microsoft said. The software maker bought Danger last year.
T-Mobile offered an updated statement on Tuesday, apologizing for the outage and saying it would credit users for one month's service because of the interruption.
T-Mobile's Sidekick forums are filled with comments from users expressing their frustration over the issue.
Among those affected was Ariel Barco, who said he noticed his service out on Friday night and got his service restored last night. But not all of his friends have been so lucky, he said.
"Many of my friends have Sidekicks and one in particular is still waiting for her address book to be restored as we speak," Barco said.
He said the outage was frustrating since it limited the ability to access social networks and the Internet, which made it hard to plan for the weekend. Plus, Barco said, T-Mobile didn't do a good job of communicating what was going on. "The issue was not communicated to the user base," Barco said. "I found out about the outage on Saturday after checking blogs and T-Mobile forums and T-Mobile's Twitter. I also checked with acquaintances with Sidekicks."
Update 1:50 p.m. PDT: Statement from T-Mobile was added.