RIM Scheduled Maintenance Outage: BIS 3.0 Email Upgrade For BlackBerry Users in North America
On March 28, 2010, Research In Motion will be conducting a planned service outage to upgrade its BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) to v3.0. The reason for this update is to provide BlackBerry BIS users with additional enhanced email services that are closer to what BlackBerry corporate users are now enjoying.
BIS (BlackBerry internet Service) is generally they way most people get their personal (non corporate exchange) emails on their BlackBerry smartphone. Generally if you’re using Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, POP3, IMAP or email from your home or small business phone or cable provider; you are using BIS email. BIS service provides BlackBerry users with a better email experience since it pushes your email and other services to your device. Push technology has been proven to be very reliable and does not need 3G service to deliver email quickly. Devices like iPhone and Android (Google) use a service deemed as a pull or fetch style technology which requires 3G to perform optimally. These devices will still get email in a non 3G environment but the experience can be very frustrating.
Another great feature of BIS service is that not all of your service enhancements are device dependent. Here are the new email features that are coming with BIS 3.0:
- Coming soon: Enhancements to Google Mail integrations
- Google Mail Account to BlackBerry smartphone synchronization of read, unread and sent email message status for new Google Mail integrations
- Note: this feature will be added throughout the Spring 2010 by region
- Google Mail Account to BlackBerry smartphone synchronization of read, unread and sent email message status for new Google Mail integrations
- Enhancements to the Google Mail Plug-in
- Create and delete labels from the BlackBerry smartphone
- Note: The Google Mail Plug-in requires BlackBerry® Device Software 4.5 or later and a Google Mail integration, using Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), within BlackBerry Internet Service.
- Create and delete labels from the BlackBerry smartphone
- Additional Language Support for Basque, Catalan, Galician, Romanian
- Increased Attachment Compatibility
- OpenDocument Presentations (.odp)
- OpenDocument Spreadsheets (.ods)
- OpenDocument Text (.odt)
- OpenDocument Text Templates (.ott)
- Windows Media Audio (.wma)
- Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (xHTML) Support for non Thick Clients
BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0 is designed to support xHTML for non Thick Clients, providing BlackBerry smartphone users with a richer user experience, allowing for buttons, additional fonts, and colour controls when subscribers access and toggle their user settings. - Device Switch Revalidation
Changes to optimize the email setup and deactivation experience when the subscriber switches BlackBerry smartphones or Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. - Hosted Email Address Passwords
Allows BlackBerry smartphone users to re-claim the BlackBerry email address if their BlackBerry Internet Service account is ever deleted.
Note: After BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0, only newly created BlackBerry email “Username/Password†accounts will be prompted to create a password, secret question, and secret answer. For information on how to create a BlackBerry email address, see KB04553. - Send Delivery Receipts
BlackBerry Internet Service users now have the ability to configure whether to allow sending delivery receipts or not. For more information, see KB12835.
I understand that this is not a big wow factor for some, but this will provide some really nice enhancements to your email service. Now this upgrades does cater a lot to those users who have Gmail accounts. And if you don’t have a Gmail account, I highly recommend you get one.
Time, date, and what to expect during the maintenance:
- There will be scheduled network maintenance by Research In Motion (RIM) affecting BIS customers between 0100 CT / 0200 EDT on March 28th and 0500 CT / 0600 EDT on March 28th.
- Blackberry will be performing a BlackBerry Internet Service v2.8 upgrade to BlackBerry Internet Service v3.0
- BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages using their BlackBerry hosted email account or integrated third-party email accounts, view email attachments, activate email service, or request to see “”more”" text during the maintenance.
- Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to create subscriber accounts or provision services for subscribers.
- The estimated duration of impact is 4 hours and affects 100% of BIS customers.
Even with 100% of all BIS customers without data, the real overall impact shouldn’t be that bad. Considering that March 28th is a Sunday, and most people sleep during this timeframe anyway. Your normal service should be restored by early that same morning, and there is nothing you will need to do. If you want to take advantage of the upgrades, you may need to resend your service books under options in your email setup.
[...] If you have not started receiving emails and other services by 7AM, simply try doing a battery pull, let your BlackBerry powers cycle, and then re-register with the network. Then try sending a test email to yourself. If you would like to read about what’s being upgraded, click here to read our post with all the de… [...]