RIMM’s Blackberry Doomed: NTSB joins other Federal agencies dropping device, in favor of iPhone

NTSB drops ‘unacceptable‘ BlackBerry for iPhone

By Stacy Cowley @CNNMoneyTech November 21, 2012: 2:28 PM ET

The NTSB says its RIM devices have been failing “at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.”

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The National Transportation Safety Board is the latest federal agency to ditch its BlackBerry phones for Apple’s iPhone — and it had a few scathing words about why it’s making the switch.

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices “have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate,” the agency wrote in a procurement request issued last week.

NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss, citing procurement rules, declined to name any specific problems the agency has had with its BlackBerry phones. RIM (RIMM) has suffered a few high-profile outages, including a global, three-day disruption last year.

“The NTSB requires effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry-out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations,” the agency wrote. “Due to performance issues with the blackberry [sic] devices, the NTSB desires to transition to a different device.”

RIM declined to comment specifically on the NTSB’s criticisms.

“We have 1 million government customers in North America

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