Sprint Text Messaging Outage

Last night, on December 16, after attempting to send three text messages from my Blackberry device through the Sprint Network, I received three text messages stating “The message could not be delivered due to a network setup error. Please Contact Customer Care. Error 2112” Considering I got a new phone yesterday, I thought it was a setup error on my part; however, I tried contacting Customer Care by telephone. Immediately, I was directed to a recording stating that all Customer Care lines were unavailable at the time. This made me wonder whether other Sprint users were having a similar problem. Then, I Google searched the message content and a blog post appeared on Yahoo! Answers. The blog immediately started filling up with angered Sprint customers full of questions.
Individuals from all over the country were explaining similar stories. Sprint users could not send outgoing text messages, but could receive them. I began looking for trends in the message content posted. Most individuals commenting on the blog posted their location, phone type, and time in which text messages stopped being sent. With this information, I was trying to come up with a solution as to what might have happened and whether it was a regional, or possibly even worldwide, problem.
At first, I noticed a trend in the phone type. The majority of phones listed were smartphones, including Blacckberry, Palm, and HTC handhelds. Therefore, I automatically believed the problem was only associated with smartphones, but I was wrong. Other phones, such as the LG Rumor, were also unable to send text messages during that time. The text messaging outage lasted a few hours before texting activities were back to normal. After looking at comments left by users who had talked to a Sprint Customer Care Associate, it was apparent that part of Sprint’s nationwide network went down and disabled all outgoing text messages.
Considering this occurred last night, Sprint claims they will keep their customers informed as they find out more information as to what happened; however, people are demanding answers now. Should Sprint users be worried that this was more than just an accident or temporary problem? I retyped “Sprint Error 2112” after reading the blog and noticed that this was not the first instance. This problem occurred earlier in the year, yet there are no solutions given by Sprint, or any other source. It seems that this is a serious problem that must be fixed and explained to Sprint customers soon.