RIM: Blackberry Messenger update caused North American outage

Posted by Jon Mallin at 2:57 pm
Dec 232009
 

RIM is blaming the second major Blackberry data outage in five days on recent updates to the Blackberry Messenger 5.0 app. Many customers received e-mails today that encourage them to download a fix: “please upgrade to version 5.0.0.57 as soon as possible.” To download the latest version, visit http://www.blackberry.com/blackberrymessenger.

RIM is being raked over the coals in the press for the most recent outage, deservingly so. Blackberry Messenger 5.0 is programmed in-house by RIM. One would expect RIM to better test its own apps prior to releasing them. RIM also scores poorly with early adopters with respect to hardware; consider the Storm 1 fiasco and the Tour trackball problems.

RIM has approximately 36 million Blackberry subscribers worldwide as of August 2009. The recent outage affected substantially all of the North American subscribers.

[via Chloe Albanesius @ GearLog]

No related posts.

Jon Mallin

Founder of Tech Bottle Blog. Attorney & Amateur Blogger. B.A. University of Michigan 1997 and J.D. NYU School of Law 2000. Jon Mallin on Google+ (Preferred) -- @JonMallin on Twitter -- LinkedIN C.V. -- Email Jon@TBOTTLE.COM
 Blackberry  Add comments
  • Rachel

    wow no wonder my messages didn’t go through!!! am I supposed to download an update? I didn’t get an email about that…..

  • http://tbottle.com Jon Mallin

    Apparently, version 5.0.0.57 is the one RIM wants users to use. 5.0.0.55 & 5.0.0.56 probably caused the outage. You can check in Blackberry App World and see what version you have. I’d paste the notification I received but it seems to have gone away now that I did the upgrade to .57.

  • http://tbottle.com Jon Mallin

    Here’s the e-mail… couldn’t find it because it isn’t addressed to any of my email addresses.. it was just pushed to my phone this afternoon.

    From: BlackBerry Network Administrator
    Subject: BlackBerry Messenger Software v5.0.0.57 Update Available
    Sent: Dec 23, 2009 12:29 PM

    A new version of BlackBerry® Messenger software is now available. If you are currently running version 5.0.0.55 or 5.0.0.56 of BlackBerry Messenger, please upgrade 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 http://www.blackberry.com/blackberrymessenger and follow the on-screen instructions. Please note that the software update is available free of charge, however downloading and using applications over the wireless network may incur data usage charges depending on your service plan. Please check with your airtime service provider for information about service costs. If you have any questions about this update, please visit http://www.blackberry.com/support/messenger.

    Thank you,
    Research In Motion Limited

    ©2009 Research In Motion Limited. All rights reserved. BlackBerry®, RIM®, Research In Motion®, SureType®, SurePress™ and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Research In Motion Limited and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and countries around the world.

   
© 2011 TECH BOTTLE http://tbottle.com Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha