Blog: There is always that day when you are in a hurry, chasing your tail all morning, sorting out a million jobs at once and you realise you have headed out of the office without your mobile phone, writes blogger Chris Pallett, from Bespoke Computing.

For most of us the only option is to head back and get it because in this day and age what you make your calls on is not just a mobile phone – it’s your camera, your calendar, your computer, pretty much your entire life all in one little package.

So when a blackout sees Blackberry services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa disrupted it’s not surprising that Twitter is full of users expressing their anger at the inability to send messages and email – and those were just the ones who could access the internet.

And with networks still messaging Blackberry owners warning that they may be experiencing “issues” with services as work is “urgently” undertaken to resolve the issue, you can’t help but think if you depend on something then you have to have a Plan B……

If you need email to run your business you have to have another option when something breaks. For a lot of people that option is Max Mail from GFI which gives you email continuity and means that you can still get to your email using the internet, even if your email server is offline.

The Blackberry blackout left millions of users without email, web browsing and messaging services following the crash at around 11am on October 10th.

So if you rely on your phone and are never without it it may well be worth sorting out a back-up plan to make sure a blackout does not leave you completely in the dark.

The real question has to be – can you really afford not to have a Plan B?