RIM Says Offers Companies Month of Free Technical Support After Disruption

By Jonathan Browning - Oct 17, 2011 4:53 PM GMT+0700

Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) will offer corporate clients one month of free technical support as it tries to retain customers following one of its worst BlackBerry service disruptions.

RIM will also give subscribers free access to online gaming applications for one month, the company said in an e-mailed statement today.

“We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence,” Co-Chief Executive Officer Mike Lazaridis said. “We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again.”

BlackBerry subscribers across most parts of the world, including U.S. and Canada, last week lost data services after a network failure in the U.K. halted messaging and Web browsing. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, said it will study compensation for the disruption after some wireless carriers including Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) offered refunds to some BlackBerry users.

RIM will face “defections” to Apple Inc. after the U.S. company started selling its new iPhone, Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities LLC in Boston said last week. Most estimates for first weekend sales ranged from 2 million to 3 million, with Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe predicting up to 4 million.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net;