Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/12/23/blackberry_outage_december_22_09/
BlackBerry outage hits America for second time in week
Instant messageware blamed
Posted in Networks, 23rd December 2009 20:48 GMT
North America has been hit with its second Blackberry email outage in seven days..
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has not commented on the extent of the service interruption, but reports indicate the Tuesday outage was widespread for consumer BlackBerry users throughout both North America and South America. The service interruption ankled consumer email on the device, but did not affect phone and text messaging service.
RIM blamed the blackout on a flaw in the smartphone's instant messaging software, BlackBerry Messenger. On Wednesday, the company rolled out a new version that it claims has resolved the issue.
The company acknowledged late Tuesday that "some BlackBerry customers in the Americas" were "experiencing delays in message delivery." It apologized for the glitch, but gave no indication as to how long the outage would last.
Consumer BlackBerry users in North America slogged through a similar email service outage for several hours on the morning of December 17.
Prior to that, the last time RIM suffered a major service outage was in February 2008, when a upgrade to its internal data-routing system caused BlackBerry addicts to go cold turkey on emails for three hours. ®