Software Glitch Affects BlackBerry Service

Some BlackBerry users in North America experienced problems on Friday when a software issue meant that the email service shut down, leaving the handheld device's email capabilities disabled.

As a result, some BlackBerry customers did not immediately receive their emails. The problem began at around 10am Friday EDT (eastern Daylight Time) and delays continued to be experienced into Saturday morning as the message backlogs were cleared out.

This is the second time BlackBerry-maker RIM (Research in Motion) has experienced a problem in its service. In April, another glitch led to millions of BlackBerry hand-held device users in the U.S. being cut off from their wireless email service for more than 10 hours. This time the problem affected only BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service users) not BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Services users).

RIM said the emails were only delayed and not lost completely. Phonecall and text-messaging services were not affected. The Canadian company has not given a reason for the interruption in the service or specified a date when it would return to normal.