BIS 3.0 rolling out on March 28th

Sources have released info regarding BIS 3.0's releasing in North America. The dates and times are as follows:

• 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

BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0 is the latest version of the BlackBerry Internet Service offered by Research In Motion:

• 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.

• 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.

During the upgrade process every BIS user will be without BlackBerry services, but considering it’s happening in the wee hours of the night, it’s going to be the West Coast users that are going to be affected. Either way you look at it, the gain is worth the pain as BIS 3.0 will be bringing 2-way Gmail sync, there’s no word on whether the service will be offered upon release or will be rolled out gradually over time like EMEA region. BIS 3.0 will also have the ability to add/delete Gmail labels, support for .wma and OpenOffice files.