I'm sure by now you either heard the news or experienced first hand the outage that causes all BlackBerry data services to cease working midday yesterday. Earlier today, RIM released an official statement concering the outage and what they think may have been the cause of the problem. Even though they still aren't 100% sure, RIM thinks the problem may have been from a flaw in two of the recently released versions (5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) of BlackBerry Messenger.

RIM Official Statement - December 23rd

A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. 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.

RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest version which resolves the issue. RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers.

Make sure you upgrade now to the latest version of BlackBerry Messenger to help avoid another outage.

• Official OTA Link for BlackBerry Messenger 5.0.0.57