No Plans For RIM Network Operations Center in Asia

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) has no plans to set up network operations centers outside Canada, despite growing demand for BlackBerry in Asia and other markets.

"Things are working really well right now. Having things centralized really improves the efficiency of the network," said Norm Lo, RIM's vice president of Asia-Pacific.

Lo didn't rule out the possibility that RIM might set up a network operation center in Asia at some point to meet growing demand for the BlackBerry service in markets. "It's a possibility," he said.

There are approximately 9 million BlackBerry users around the world. While RIM doesn't break user numbers down by specific region, the company estimates that 25 percent to 30 percent of users are located in countries outside North America. "And it's growing very fast," Lo said.

RIM currently has two network operation centers, both in Canada, where the company's headquarters is. Every company that uses a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) links via the Internet to one of these two centers, which route e-mail to and from the company's servers.

In April, RIM suffered an outage in the U.S. and Canada that prevented users from receiving messages. The disruption started when one of the company's network operation centers apparently went down. BlackBerry users outside the U.S. were not affected by the outage.

The BlackBerry service is widely available in Asia, including in China and India. There are only a handful of Asian countries, such as North Korea, Laos, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, where the service is not yet available.