BlackBerry Email Outage, All Carriers... AGAIN?!?!

**Update** - BIS back to normal! Click Here for Full Up to the Minute Coverage.

That's right, for the second time this year BlackBerry Users across North America are enduring problems with their email service. The outage/delays appear to be affecting BlackBerry BIS subscribers to varying degrees on all North American Carriers. At this point no time frame for resolution has been given.

The first reportstrickled in this morning, and have continued throughout the day. T-Mobile and AT&T have both confirmed their BlackBerry subscribers are affected, but reports are coming in from across North America of delays in receiving emails. Sprint, Alltel, Telus... I'm on Rogers in Canada and am affected (one hour delay for one message, 20 minutes for another, 3 minutes for one, and so on).

Apparently up to 50% of subscribers may be suffering delays, but all messages will be sent/received once the incident is cleared up. Only email service has been interrupted (SMS and PIN continue to work).

I seem to recall RIM saying this "would never happen again" (didn't somebody once say the Titanic was unsinkable?!). At least it's a Friday...at this point we should be putting our berrys down and relaxing for the weekend. :) What really is bugging me right now is a certain saying that's stuck in my mind - "what happens once will never happen again, but what happens twice will surely happen a third time." Oh well, I still love RIM and my Berry. Doesn't absence make the heart grow fonder??

Are you experiencing delays? Is your BB service still running ok? Visit the BlackBerry Email Blackout thread in the CrackBerry.com forums and share what you know! Up to the minute CrackBerry coverage after the jump.

CrackBerry.com Updates 

Update: 7:00pm CST: According to our friends at BerryShack.com , their RIM insider contact is saying the Outage is affecting Carriers worldwide and that the problem should be solved by 10pm EDT / 6pm PST Friday, September 7th.

Update: 8:15pm CST: I'm still Hooped (I'm on Rogers in Canada). I don't quite get it. I've sent several emails to myself from several different email accounts. One came through to my berry in an instant, another in three minutes, another in thirteen, another in thirty, and I'm still waiting on a few that have not arrived for over an hour. Oh, and the ones that came in didn't arrive in the same order I sent them. Wierd.

Update: 8:35pm CST: This posted by member speed_demon29 in the forums:

just called T-mobile and after verifying all my info, the rep came out and said RIM is having the problem - not the network...but "since we value your time and know how frustrating this is..here's 200 bonus minutes"...I'm going to have them credit me monetarily when we're back to normal. Get your credit people....this is also why I love T-mobile though.....great customer service.

Update: 9:05pm CST: Guess who's back?! Reports are coming in from users across North America that email service is coming back to life. I already seem to be at full swing on Rogers - just sent 12 emails to myself from various accounts and they came through INSTANTLY. I Love my BlackBerry.  Good work RIM, way to stay late at the office on a Friday night and take care of business. I can't wait to hear what the cause was.  I'm sure things aren't quite 100% restored yet... there's probably a slight backlog of messages (say 100+ Million or so) to be strategically dispersed... my guess is it will be Saturday morning before things are totally restored.

Is your service back up? Still out? Let us know in the Forums!

Update: 9:47pm CST: Posted in the forums by keizerjrr:

Still No Service on AT&T Oregon. We are still out of service..... haven't recieved an e-mail since 6:00 am PDT this morning..... This sucks. 

While many users are reporting restored email service, others are still out of luck. Maybe I got my hopes up too soon. Just sent myself some more test messages... one came through, two didn't. This could be a long night. Time for a drink!

Update: 11:10pm CST: It's up, oh wait, It's down. It's up, It's down. Hang on...I think it's up?! No, No...apparently not, it's still down. That's the word. For some it's up, for some it's down, and for others it up and down. I'm going to bed, and hopefully when I wake up in the morning I can make a post that says the Universe is back in alignment and all of our BlackBerrys are working ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!

It's funny though, I was just in the process of writing the first article/class for Back to School with CrackBerry.com - BlackBerry 101, the topic of which is 'Why Choose BlackBerry?' One of the the obvious highlights of choosing BlackBerry is the Reliability and Always On, Always Connected factor. I'm thinking about pushing the first class back a week, just so this whole situation is out of our minds! :) 

Update: 11:24pm CST: Who can sleep?! But here's the good news. The problem is apparently FIXED. But just like last time, it will take some time for everything to return to normal. This just came out on Associated Press: 

E-Mail Outage Hits Some BlackBerry Users

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A software glitch shut down e-mail service for some BlackBerry users Friday, and delays were still being felt hours after the problem was fixed.

Research in Motion Ltd., the Waterloo, Ontario-based company that makes the ubiquitous mobile device, said no e-mails were lost in the shutdown that affected an unspecified number of customers in North America who subscribe to the BlackBerry Internet Service. Phone service and text messaging were unaffected.

However, even after e-mail service was restored, slowdowns persisted into Friday night as message backlogs were being cleared out. The company did not provide an estimate of when service would return to normal and did not specify the software problem.

"(Research in Motion) is continuing to monitor the situation and apologizes to customers for any inconvenience," the company said in a statement.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a higher tier of software geared toward large businesses, was not affected.

Service outages have been rare in the BlackBerry's eight-year history, but the outages that have surfaced have prompted angry backlashes against the company because of its lengthy silences about what caused them and the cryptic and jargon-laden explanations that eventually emerge.

Research in Motion waited two days after a major outage in April before telling customers that a minor software upgrade had crashed the system. The outage prompted grumbles from always-on users all the way up to the highest levels of business and government, including the White House and the Canadian Parliament.

More than 8 million people have BlackBerry subscriptions worldwide. The company has relationships with 270 carriers in 110 countries.

Update: 8:00am CST: Woke up this morning, rolled over, grabbed my Curve, and opened the email application to find 32 messages waiting. For me, it looks like the messages started to come through at 2am CST in groups of three or four messages at a time, with another group coming every 30 - 45 minutes thereafter. The backlogged flow of messages caught up by 5:30am. Things seem back to normal now!

Looking through the forums, this seems to be story for most people. At somepoint in the wee hours of the morning, the day's missed messages started flowing again. So I think the crisis is over! The Universe is Back in Alignment. :)

Share your BIS Service Outage Stories in the CrackBerry Forums.