Beyond Binary

A massive outage left many T-Mobile USA customers across the country unable to make calls or get data on their cellular phones on Tuesday.

In a statement, T-Mobile said it is working to get its service back up and running.

"T-Mobile customers may be experiencing service disruptions impacting voice and data," the company said in a statement. "Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible. We will provide updates as more information is available."

The move comes as the carrier is still working to restore data to T-Mobile Sidekick users, many of whom have been without some or all of their information for an entire month.

In a statement on Friday, T-Mobile said many of its Sidekick customers have been able to restore at least their contacts, although it acknowledged not everyone got their address books back.

"There was a very small group of customers for whom we were unable to recover any contacts," the carrier said. It is still working to bring back other data, including calendars, to-do lists, notes, pictures and other data. "We will share more details around this restoration process very soon," it said.

Microsoft, whose Danger service powers the Sidekick, initially thought all data might be lost, but later said it expected to be able to restore most, if not all user data.

Update 5:04 p.m. PT: In a slightly updated statement, T-Mobile said "Some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting voice and some data services."

Reports from users seem to vary. In San Francisco, I was unable to make or receive calls or get e-mail. Meanwhile, a few users in Boston and Washington, D.C. told me that their T-Mobile phones appeared to be working.

If other people want to drop me a note of where they are and what's working or not, I'll get a better sense of things.

5:20 p.m. PT: T-Mobile subscribers in eastern Tennessee, Honolulu, Long Island, N.Y. all e-mailed me to say they, too, were experiencing outages.

Gretchen Wuersching, an accountant who lives in Mount Vernon, N.Y. and works in Manhattan said she has been without service in New York City and Westchester County. Wuersching said she first noticed her service out in Manhattan and was still out in both Westchester County and later when she drove to the Bronx.

Meanwhile, a T-Mobile subscriber in Orange County, Calif. said service was intermittent, while another customer in Denver said her BlackBerry could make calls and handle e-mail, as could friends on T-Mobile's network there, but that text messages were not working.

Several people in the Salt Lake City area said they were having problems, while another in Utah said that calls and text messages were not working, but that Web and e-mail access was continuing.

All in all, it sounds like a very mixed bag for T-Mobile subscribers. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and I'll let you know when I hear more from T-Mobile.

Update 6:24 p.m. PT: T-Mobile issued an updated statement saying it now believes only 5 percent of customers are experiencing outages.

"We're making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers," a T-mobile representative said. "At this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions. Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. Our rapid response team is working continuously to fully resolve this disruption. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers."

The e-mails are literally flooding into my in-box from around the country and far more people are telling me they are experiencing outages of one variety or another than say they have full service. But perhaps that's the nature of who e-mails.

Among the dozens of e-mails of problems I have gotten was this message from Karen Jacobson, an analyst and programmer in North Carolina. "My daughter called me from Chicago to say that her text messaging doesn't work and asked me to call T-Mobile," Jacobson said. "I called them and was told that the network was busy. I then tried texting ... and was unable to text from down here. My friend Crystal called from Florida, on her landline, to tell me that her T-Mobile has not been able to make or accept phone calls for at least an hour (and now her boyfriend is angry cause he thinks she ignored him!)."

For my part, I have data access on my Blackberry Curve, but no ability to make calls. E-mail service, which was out for a time, seems to be back.

Update 10:50 p.m. PT: T-Mobile issued an updated statement saying it has restored voice and text/picture messaging services to customers who experienced outages and apologizing for the inconvenience.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX

(Credit: CNET)

Microsoft has begun the process of restoring data to Sidekick owners who have been without it since a massive outage began at the beginning of the month, the software giant said Tuesday.

In a statement, Microsoft said it has posted a tool to T-Mobile's Web site that allows Sidekick owners to restore their address book.

Although it initially feared that much data might be lost, Microsoft said last week that it expected to be able to recover most, if not all, of the information. However, the company also said that the process of bringing back the data will go beyond this week.

Here is the full statement:

The Danger/Microsoft team continues to work around the clock and has completed its latest round of rigorous tests. We are now ready to make the first phase of the content restoration process available to you, starting with personal contacts.

This data restoration effort is only necessary for the minority of customers who lost data from their Sidekick devices.

Beginning today, log into the My T-Mobile website, where there will be a recovery tool to restore contacts you may have lost during the recent service outage. This tool will enable you to view the contacts you had on your device as of October 1. With a few clicks and a confirmation, you will be able to restore these contacts to your Sidekick. If you have recreated some of the same contacts on your Sidekick since October 1, you can choose to keep both sets of contacts, merge them, or just keep the set of contacts now on your device. You may also edit any partial or complete duplicates on your Sidekick after restoration.

We continue to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to restore your data. We're making solid progress on the next phase in this restoration process, including your photographs, notes, to-do lists, marketplace data and high scores.

We appreciate your ongoing patience.

Microsoft on Monday apologized for the length of time it is taking to restore missing data to T-Mobile Sidekicks. The company said it expects to begin restoring data this week, but added that bringing back all data will take longer than that.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX

(Credit: CNET)

In a note on its Web site, Microsoft said that the reason for the delay is that the company wants to make sure that it doesn't risk messing up data as it restores information to users' phones.

"The Danger/Microsoft team is continuing to work around the clock on the data restoration proces," Microsoft said. "We apologize that this is taking so long, but we want to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data."

A significant number of Sidekick owners have been without their data since the beginning of the month, when Sidekick data service became interrupted amid a massive outage. At one point, Microsoft feared much of the data was lost, but the company said early last week that things were looking better and later added that it expected to be able to bring back most, if not all, of the data.

"We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter," Microsoft said.

Although Microsoft has said it expects to recover most if not all lost data for Sidekick users, T-Mobile said on Thursday that new sales of the product remain on hold.

The carrier declined to say when--or if--Sidekick sales would resume.

(Credit: CNET)

"We're pleased that Microsoft/Danger is continuing to make progress," T-Mobile vice president David Beigie said in a statement to CNET News. "T-Mobile's sole focus remains on helping Sidekick customers recover from this disruption."

Service for the device has been impaired for going on two weeks. Last Saturday, Microsoft, whose Danger subsidiary powers the Sidekick service, said it believed that any data that was not on users' devices might be permanently lost.

However, by Monday, Microsoft said it was more optimistic and early on Thursday Microsoft issued a letter to customers saying it expected to recover most, if not all, user data.

All models of the Sidekick have remained listed as "temporarily out of stock" on T-Mobile's Web site.

The T-Mobile Sidekick LX.

(Credit: CNET)

When the T-Mobile Sidekick started having data problems two weeks ago, it was a big pain for nearly all of the company's roughly 800,000 subscribers. But it became particularly rough for the many deaf people who have been among the Sidekick's most loyal fan base.

"It was severely limiting and made me very dependent on others," Carla McCraw, a Web designer from San Antonio, Texas, said in an e-mail interview. "This loss of independence was very stressful on me."

McCraw said she relies on her Sidekick to manage everyday tasks, from keeping up with closures at her son's day care to whether soccer practice will be rained out.

"It was extremely frustrating, not being able to know, and my mother had to call the soccer coach and day care, making me feel extremely inadequate," she said. "I had to rely on the Internet through (alternative services such as) Yahoo and Facebook to let my friends know my Sidekick was down."

The good news, for both deaf and hearing users, is that Microsoft and T-Mobile appear to be making headway at restoring much of the data that, at one time, appeared gone permanently.

But even an outage can be a big deal for those that use the Sidekick as something of a communications lifeline.

Lisa Gault, a deaf Sidekick owner in Katy, Texas.

(Credit: Lisa Gault)

"As the outage went on, I became concerned about how my deaf teenage son would be able to communicate in an emergency," Jamie Berke, an About.com guide based in the Washington metro area, said in an e-mail.

"I know he is not the only one," said Berke, who is also deaf. "The outage probably meant that thousands of deaf children who depend on their Sidekicks to communicate with parents were unable to communicate in the event of an emergency. Plus, I myself, would have been unable to communicate in an emergency."

The Sidekick became an early favorite in deaf circles because of its good keyboard, then-state-of-the-art instant-messaging abilities, and ability to connect to relay services. T-Mobile improved things further by adding a data-only option so that deaf users weren't paying for voice minutes they didn't use.

Because the Sidekick didn't evolve as fast as other smartphones, many users--deaf and hearing alike--moved to the BlackBerry and other devices. And after their recent experiences, many of the remaining Sidekick users in the deaf community have said they are considering jumping ship, once their T-Mobile contracts end.

"I am going to look into Sprint's BlackBerry, which more and more deaf people are taking up, and have complimented, and (said) that it is a lot more reliable," McCraw said.

Lisa Gault, a deaf Sidekick owner in Katy, Texas, said she in an e-mail interview that she relies on the Sidekick as a means to stay in touch with her family.

"It's a way for the school to get a hold of me, if something were to occur with my son who is (not deaf)," Gault said.

Gault said that even short of an emergency, it is a problem not to get her e-mail for an extended period.

"It's annoying, as my friends think I'm ignoring them, when in reality, I didn't get the e-mails yet," Gault said. "It really put the deaf community at more of a disadvantage--more so than for hearing people, since we're so reliant on e-mail (devices) to keep in touch."

Microsoft said Thursday that it believes it has recovered most of the Sidekick data that it initially feared might have been permanently lost.

"We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage," corporate vice president Roz Ho said in a letter to customers."We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible."

On Wednesday, at least two lawsuits were filed against Microsoft and T-Mobile over the Sidekick outages, which began at the beginning of the month with data service interruptions and have left many users without access to their address books.

Microsoft had said on Saturday that it believed all data that was not on users' phones was probably permanently lost. However, by Monday it was sounding more optimisitic it could recover the data.

Here's the full text of the letter:

Dear T-Mobile Sidekick customers,

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users. If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into the T-Mobile Sidekick forum at http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data. We will continue working closely with T-Mobile to restore user data as quickly as possible. We are eager to deliver the level of reliable service that our incredibly loyal customers have become accustomed to, and we are taking immediate steps to help ensure this does not happen again. Specifically, we have made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick Service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained.

Once again, we apologize for this situation and the inconvenience that it has created. Please know that we are working all-out to resolve this situation and restore the reliability of the service.

Sincerely,

Roz Ho

Corporate Vice President

Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation

Update 10:10 a.m.: Amended letter to include Microsoft's final wording of letter, which said it believes it has recovered "most, if not all" data.

It was only a matter of time, but the T-Mobile Sidekick issue has now spilled over to the courthouse.

A number of lawsuits have been filed, including two filed in federal court in Northern California on Wednesday that allege both negligence and false claims on the part of Microsoft and T-Mobile.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX

(Credit: CNET)

The suits come amid a massive outage of the service that powers the Sidekick, which has hampered data service since early this month and left many users without access to their calendars, address books, and other information. At one point, Microsoft and T-Mobile indicated that any data not yet recovered was probably lost permanently, however the companies said Monday that they were more optimistic about being able to bring back users' information.

One suit, filed on behalf of a Bakersfield, Calif., man "and all others similarly situated" charges that, among other things, Microsoft and Danger failed to use reasonable care in handling Sidekick owners data and that the Sidekick was falsely advertised. That suit seeks monetary damages as well as an order requiring the companies to fix the Sidekicks and service or offer a full refund.

"T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss" said Ira P. Rothken, an attorney working on that case. "We are hopeful that T-Mobile and the rest of the defendants will do the right thing, use this as an opportunity to redesign the system as a new standard for cloud computing storage, and provide full compensation for the data loss."

Another suit, filed on behalf of Maureen Thompson "and all others similarly situated" seeks unspecified damages for Thompson and others who have lost data as a result of the recent Sidekick problems.

According to her lawyer, Thompson owns a Sidekick used primarily by her daughter, an aspiring model, singer, and songwriter who used her Sidekick to store personal and business contacts, appointments, and even irreplaceable song lyrics not stored anywhere else. The lawyer said that Thompson bought the device "primarily because T-Mobile promised that any data would be protected and available no matter what happened to the phone."

"T-Mobile's initial efforts to reimburse Sidekick users are a step in the right direction, but fail to sufficiently compensate Sidekick users for this disastrous loss of data," Thompson attorney Jay Edelson said in a statement. "T-Mobile and Microsoft promised to safeguard the most important data their customers possess and then apparently failed to follow even the most basic data protection principles. What they did is unthinkable in this day and age."

In that lawsuit, Thompson's lawyers argue why the outage of the Sidekick was particularly devastating, noting the device's cloud-based architecture in which the primary copy of the data is stored, not on the devices, but on servers operated by Microsoft's Danger unit.

"Further complicating the data loss is the fact that Sidekicks, unlike iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones, are not designed to sync locally with a user's personal computer without additional software and hardware," the suit states. "This means that most users were not able to backup their data locally, but were encouraged and required to rely on Microsoft/Danger."

Microsoft declined to comment on the lawsuit, but, a representative said on Wednesday that the company is "obviously very sorry for the inconvenience that this situation has caused Sidekick users, and we are working around the clock in an effort to recover and restore the data for any affected users. While it is still too early to say for sure, we announced on Monday that our engineering teams were increasingly optimistic."

For its part, T-Mobile said in a statement that it "does not comment on pending litigation."

"We are focused on helping our Sidekick customers recover from this recent service disruption and are continuing to support Microsoft's ongoing efforts to address and resolve the Danger platform issues," the company said.

T-Mobile has halted sales of the Sidekick amid the ongoing issues.

T-Mobile said late on Monday that it may yet be able to recover Sidekick users' information that it had previously thought was lost as part of a massive server failure by Microsoft's Danger subsidiary.

"Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible," it said.

(Credit: CNET)

Those who do suffer permanent data loss will get a $100 "customer appreciation card" good toward T-Mobile service or products, the carrier said in a statement.

"For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days - there is no action needed on the part of these customers," T-Mobile said. "We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered."

That marks a significant change in tone. On Saturday, the carrier and Microsoft had warned that any data not on a customer's phone at that point was likely gone forever.

Monday's business day came and went with little public comment from the companies, but apparently efforts to restore data were more fruitful.

T-Mobile did halt sales of the Sidekick as it investigated the issue.

T-Mobile continued to urge customers not to remove the battery on the device, reset the Sidekick or let it run out of power while the company works to restore its servers.

So, just what the heck happened?

That's one of many questions that Sidekick owners and the broader tech community are asking after one of the largest data failures in recent memory.

Two days after warning customers that their contacts, calendar, and other information may be gone, Microsoft and T-Mobile spent most of Monday in silent mode as they continued to work to try to recover the data from thousands of Sidekick owners.

(Credit: CNET)

Microsoft has said that the hardware failure that caused the problem took out both the primary and backup copies of the database that contained Sidekick users' information. But the question remains, why wasn't there a true independent backup of the data?

T-Mobile has said that it is exploring what to do to try to compensate customers who have lost their data, but as of 4:30 p.m. PDT on Monday had not offered a promised update on where things stood.

For those who don't have their data, there was little to do but vent on various forums and hope that the data recovery efforts bear fruit. (There may be some hope on that front, as some users did report some data re-appearing on their devices on Monday).

Still, those who do have some or all of their information on their device, might want to back that up pronto. Enthusiast site Hiptop3.com and T-Mobile itself have offered up a few ways to back up contact information, in particular.

And, because it bears repeating, T-Mobile is warning those who do have information on their device not to reset their Sidekick, take out the battery, or let the device fully run out of power.