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BlackBerry Messenger at fault in Tuesday outage

Research In Motion has confirmed that BlackBerry Messenger problems took down data service Tuesday for many users, and it has released a new version as the problem clears.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
Tom Krazit

Research In Motion has pushed out new software to correct a problem that left some BlackBerry users high and dry Tuesday.

Blame BlackBerry Messenger for Tuesday's data service outage. RIM

A new version of BlackBerry Messenger is available that apparently fixes the problems experienced by BlackBerry customers, according to a report by BusinessWeek. For several hours on Tuesday, BlackBerry users were unable to use the data services on their phones, preventing e-mails from being received and applications from working correctly.

In a statement provided to CNET, RIM said the "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."

BlackBerry Messenger version 5.0.0.57 is the one to install, if you're currently running either version described above, and that should be available through the phone's browser or in BlackBerry App World. Tuesday's outage follows another one last week shorter in duration.