Egypt mobile firms announce compensation for BlackBerry blackout

Etisalat, Mobinil and Vodafone are looking to soothe user frustrations by offering credit top-ups and discounts on forthcoming bills

Egypt's three mobile phone operators have announced compensation for BlackBerry users after last week's three-day service outage.
Mobinil said on its Twitter account on Thursday that it will add the equivalent of three days compensation to all BlackBerry postpaid customers' upcoming bills, and add credit to the accounts of all prepaid users over the next week.
Vodafone Egypt similar announced it would give prepaid customers three days of free Blackberry services and a 10 per cent discount on monthly bills for its postpaid customers.
Etisalat Egypt tweeted that "subscribers will be compensated for the days the service was unavailable" but has not yet given further details.
The longest BlackBerry outage in many years outraged customers on five continents -- from Australia, to Asia and North America -- threatening to cost the granddaddy of all smartphones more business when it's already struggling to keep up in a crowded marketplace.
The three-day blackout interrupted email and Internet services for tens of millions of frustrated users and inflicted more damage on an already tarnished brand.
Research In Motion Ltd., which makes the phones and handles email traffic to them, said the system was steadily processing a vast backlog of stalled messages.
The company's two CEOs apologised profusely. It was a break from the past, when outages of BlackBerry service merited only terse statements from the company.