Glitches in the BlackBerry Messenger service, were the cause of yesterday's BlackBerrry email outage, according to RIM. RIM apologized and suggests that if you haven't updated your BlackBerry Messenger service since December 14, that you do so immediately.
RIM reported in a statement that the service disruption began Tuesday afternoon and that email messages were delayed. RIM said phone and SMS services were not affected.
Some BlackBerry owners were able to get credits from $5.00 to $25.00 from their carriers due to the email outage.
"A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry
customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent
during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on
BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected.
Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary
analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in
two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions
5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue
within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action
to restore service.
RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version
5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded
BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest
version which resolves the issue.
RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers."
If you are currently running version 5.0.0.55 or 5.0.0.56 of
BlackBerry Messenger, you should update it to version 5.0.0.57 as soon
as possible. This version addresses issues with versions 5.0.0.55 and
5.0.0.56.
To download the most current version of BlackBerry Messenger software, please visit www.blackberry.com/blackberrymessenger