T-Mobile's Sidekick out of the doghouse, back on sale

Sales of Sidekick mobile devices resume in wake of service outage that had T-Mobile, Microsoft scrambling

T-Mobile, about a month after a service outage threatened to eliminate data on its customers' Sidekick smartphones, has started selling the devices again.

The service outage was caused by a server problem at Microsoft's Danger subsidiary, an issue that even had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer scrambling for answers. T-Mobile and Microsoft initially thought that Sidekick users would lose their data, photos and other information, but wound up restoring most of the information and kicking in a $100 gift card.

As always happens whenever a service outage occurs these days, industry watchers tripped over one another to warn about the dangers of having your data in the cloud.

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T-Mobile, about a month after a service outage threatened to eliminate data on its customers' Sidekick smartphones, has started selling the devices again.

The service outage was caused by a server problem at Microsoft's Danger subsidiary, an issue that even had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer scrambling for answers. T-Mobile and Microsoft initially thought that Sidekick users would lose their data, photos and other information, but wound up restoring most of the information and kicking in a $100 gift card.

As always happens whenever a service outage occurs these days, industry watchers tripped over one another to warn about the dangers of having your data in the cloud.

From Sidekick to Gmail: A short history of cloud computing outages

Recognizing that Sidekicks might be a tougher sell in the wake of the incident -- not to mention increased competition from a slew of new smartphones from Verizon and others -- T-Mobile has cut the price of its top-of-the-line Sidekick LX by $25 to $150 with a two-year contract.

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.