I mentioned in my blog on Tuesday that we’d be looking at the timing of our Blackberry launch given the website capacity problems we have been experiencing over the last few weeks. Our concern is that the demand for Blackberry could make matters worse if we launched when the site is less than perfect.
So we’ve conducted the review today and we’ve made a decision to delay the launch of Blackberry for a short time.
This means we’ll have more time to concentrate on making improvements to the site and improving availability additionally as Payback is essential to our members and our business we didn’t want to put the delivery date of this at risk– the “pre selection” window will open as planned on the 24th November, .
The good news is that the development project for Blackberry has gone very well and as of today the project has a green status – this means that all of the computer coding and testing has gone well and we’re confident that everything else is ready to support it, we've just got to switch it on.
The bad news is that a significant upgrade to our website to guarantee the capacity we need cannot be made until 1stDecember. The improvements in capacity we've made already are having an impact - but not enough for us to be 100% sure that we can cope with the extra demand from Blackberry.
So it is with regret that we’ve decided to delay the launch of Blackberry services until after the upgrade on 1st December.
Fortunately we will be able to deploy the computer code this month and “mask” the Blackberry options on our website – so once the capacity upgrade has gone in and we’re confident it is working well - we’ll be able to switch Blackberry on soon after.
We feel it would not be right to commit to an exact launch date yet as we want to make sure that the changes will do what they’re intended to, and so we’ll announce the exact date in a further update after 1st December.
I know that many of you have been waiting a long time and will be disappointed by this news but I hope you can appreciate that we have to put the concerns of our existing customers first and want to make sure that those already on giffgaff get the best experience possible.
We understand delaying Blackberry is frustrating but I ask you to try and continue to be patient in the knowledge that we are 100% committed to launching Blackberry and are working very hard on making sure that when we do, it will be an enjoyable and smooth experience – for all our members.
[Edit - as of the 2nd of December, a new update on the Blackberry Launch from the gaffer is available here]
