* FINAL UPDATE: Things are back to normal. RIM Statment to follow.

* Update 1: OK, preliminary word coming in is that it's a partial outage affecting North American carriers: BlackBerry Messenger and things like the web browser and apps that use a data connection. Email seems ok though. And it seems not all carriers and not all subscribers are affected. I sure am though.. was in the middle of making a video on the new crackberry launcher when data quit. lol. *

* Update 2: BlackBerry data is no more. No emails, no web browsing, no BlackBerry messenger for it's North American users. Estimated time for a fix to come through is 3 hrs to a day, yes..a day.

* Update 3: ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!! This is SERIOUSLY FRUSTRATING AS ALL HELL.

* Update 4: It seems that upgrading to the newest version of BlackBerry Messenger (blackberry.com/messenger) may help resolve some of the BBM issues. So if you can manage to get it loaded up, you might have some life again. Man this night has been frak'd. 

* Update 5: Here is the current Google Search Results for "BlackBerry"... it makes for some additional fun reading to kill the time. Maybe we should all just go to bed now... and hopefully by morning this nightmare will be over. On the silver lining side... we set a new forum record tonight for users online. Yay outage! lol. Bad joke. This sucks. BlackBerry is also the #1 trending topic on twitter tonight! BlackBerry email update below.

Lots of reports have been coming in over the past hour of BlackBerry Messenger service being on the fritz. You'll sometimes get a check mark on a sent message, but not the D or the R signifying that the message has been delivered and read. Some users seem to be unaffected. For others, some of the messages are getting through and others are not (as shown above - Adam received two of the six messages I sent, yet I have yet to receive confirmation of him actually reading them). We're starting to get reports from some people that it's coming back up for them... let's see how this goes. You can follow the forum threads below and use the comments to this post to stay on top of it!

• BBM issue today? >>
  
• BBM Service Down? >>

AT&T Email... this should hold pretty true cross carriers:

Valued Customer,

This e-mail is to provide an update to a network problem that MAY affect your Mobile Service.

Trouble Ticket: TT000012693195
Severity: 1-High
Description of Issue: Degradation of RIM Blackberry services
Location of Issue: All Regions; All Markets and surrounding areas
Start Time: Dec 22 2009 04:30 PM PST
Symptoms you MAY experience: RIM Blackberry BES/BIS users may be unable to send/receive messages or may have difficulty connecting to the network.
End Time: Unknown

UPDATE: RIM is performing emergency maintenance on the RIM network which is expected to take 6-8 hours. During the maintenance little or no traffic is expected to pass. Next update will be sent after 6 AM.

Technicians are working towards resolution as quickly as possible. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause. Thank you for your patience as we work towards resolving this issue. If you have any questions, please contact Mobility Enterprise Customer Maintenance Center at 888-334-3787+PIN for more information.

AT&T Mobility -- CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
Use pursuant to Company instructions