Infrastructure

So our country’s little darling, RIM, has just had a screw up. Ah well, given the state of the company’s infrastructure, it was bound to happen at some point in time. It really was negligent to channel almost all of the Western hemisphere’s messaging traffic through a single center in Waterloo. One would have though that a firm as wise and business-savvy as RIM would have avoided this kind of a crisis by giving proper infrastructure the investment if deserves. I guess even the best of us make mistakes.

Though the share prices seem to have withstood the storm (for now), short-term Blackberry sales will obviously be affected and the trust of current users in RIM may be hurt.

This leads me to think of another story.

Last September, the Viaduc de la Concorde in Laval collapsed, killing 5 people and injuring 6 others. The media was quick to follow up on the tragedy by revealing that a large number of other viaducts and bridges all through Quebec were danger of collapsing, all because of underinvestment in infrastructure on the part of the Quebec Liberal government. This contributed strongly to its poor showing in the recent provincial elections.

So here’s the message: infrastructure might not win you votes or new customers, but it could easily cost you them.