According to the team over at Dataoutage News, EMEA carriers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will be getting a BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) upgrade this weekend. On March 14th EMEA networks will be going from BIS 2.8 to BIS 3.0 beginning on at 2AM GMT and lasting for four hours.

BlackBerry Internet Service v2.8 upgrade to BlackBerry Internet Service v3.0 – EMEA – 14 March

BBCHG45911 (Update) S1 Severity Maintenance for BlackBerry Internet Service (v2.x) Email service for subscribers of *EMEA BIS (MULT)

This message is to inform you of scheduled network maintenance.

Maintenance Summary: BlackBerry Internet Service v2.8 upgrade to BlackBerry Internet Service v3.0

Impact: BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages, use the BlackBerry Internet Service web site, or perform activities such as creating new accounts, accessing their Internet mailbox, integrating third-party email accounts, or viewing email attachments during the maintenance.

Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers during the maintenance. [0214]

Ticket Number: BBCHG45911
Change Window Start Date and Time: 14 March 2010 02:00:00 (GMT)
Change Window End Date and Time: 14 March 2010 06:00:00 (GMT)
Estimated Duration of Service Impact: 4 hour(s) and 0 minute(s)
% of Subscribers Affected: 100.00 (estimated)

EST =   GMT – 5 hours
EDT =   GMT – 4 hours
AEST = GMT + 10 hours

The BIS 3.0 upgrade for North America should follow in the next couple weeks. Among the new features in BIS 3.0 are updates to the Google Mail plugin, additional language support, OpenOffice document support, Windows Media Audio (.wma) support and more.

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