if connected

Background: the north American Blackberry system went down, and so no users could receive or send emails on their always-on email system. RIM/Blackberry fixed it within a day.
This was/is big news as users expected the system to be always-on. They relied upon it: hence its nickname of ‘crackberry’.
But there are numerous other areas where digital is a must have part of life at home or in the office. Both companies and consumer service providers must adapt fast or lose customers, or employees that find themselves unable to do their job.
Examples:
Broadband at home – when home broadband goes down, in 2007 this impacts consumers’ shopping, social arrangements (communication via email or IM), entertainment (youtube, itunes, p2p), personal finance (bill payment, banking, shares) etc. etc. Back in the dial-up era, consumers used less, and could reach for a PAYG dial-up CD and swap ISP. With broadband this isn’t practical and few consumers have a mobile phone that is good enough to step in and act as a broadband modem (yet).
Mobile – if a mobile phone is lost or breaks, the problem is that that persons’ friends and co-workers expect it to be there. They may leave messages on voicemail that can’t be picked up, or send SMS messages. Savvy operators know this, and offer fast response options.
Office Internet – if a company’s office connectivity has hiccups or dies, it impacts communication tremendously. Email is a primary communication tool. Fax is obsolescent, post is too slow and inflexible, telex is gone. And, for companies that are on the edge, it can take out desk phones too.
RIM was pretty fast to react.
Consumer ISPs need to be as well, or consumers will jump ship, however good the multiplay bundle.
Equally, companies must be fast to fix digital tools.
Internet and email are no longer “nice to haves” they are central to people’s personal and work lives. Hours matter in fixing, let alone days: partners and clients expect a company to be digitally available and working through the business day and increasingly outside it.
When things do go wrong, how serious they are depends on the alternatives available. Be it another broadband connection, a different phone, or a different email address.
Back in 1999/2000 I worked for a leading UK ISP. Our corporate email was so unreliable that I switched to using an ISP email address from my employer instead of the corporate address. The only difference was one address ended .com (corporate) the other .net (ISP). That was pretty face saving, and I bet few companies knew what I was doing. However, it’s pretty rare for an employee to have that kind of fallback.
But if an office email system goes down, or a PC dies and it takes days to replace, or an office is without broadband for days upon days, or an office has such an unreliable phone system that clients, partners, prospects can’t help but notice when the line breaks up… then that company will have a serious detrimental impact on its EBITDA and must react.
[Written from a working broadband connection at home]