Word on the street is that Research in Motion has a scheduled maintenance window coming on October 3rd and that they will be upgrading North American carriers to BIS 2.8.

There is a RIM infrastructure upgrade scheduled for 10/03/2009 at 2:01:00 AM EST. During the maintenance window RIM will update the BIS Platform to Version 2.8 that supports the Americas; according to RIM all Blackberry Internet Services are expected to be down for 240 minutes. According to RIM this will affect all carriers on the North America Relay.

What’s new in 2.8:

• Two-way wireless synchronization with Google Mail Contacts* and the Address Book on the BlackBerry smart phone:
  • Synchronize Google Mail contacts quickly and easily to the BlackBerry smart phone
  • Add or edit Contacts and the Contacts are automatically updated, whether they are updated on the computer or BlackBerry smart phone
  • The documentation says this is scheduled to sync every 4 hours and will not work on BlackBerry Connect devices. It also will obviously not work on BES contacts or even Google Mail Contact Groups whatever those are.
• Enhancements to email setup and settings:
  • Automatic Login now supports most billing identifiers, which allows new subscribers with wireless service providers that use PIN, IMEI, or ESN as a billing identifier to create BlackBerry Internet Service accounts from the BlackBerry smart phone, without having to create a login user name and password
  • Note: This feature will be available approximately one week after the BlackBerry Internet Service upgrade.
• Windows Live Hotmail revalidation:
  • With BlackBerry Internet Service 2.8, new Windows Live Hotmail mail integrations will be defaulted to a protocol that is designed so as not to require 90 day reauthorization.
  • Note: Existing BlackBerry smart phone users accessing Windows Live Hotmail using Microsoft MSP will still be required to revalidate their Windows Live Hotmail account every 90 days.

*Note: Two-way wireless Contact synchronization with Google Mail Contacts requires BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 and configuration through email settings on the BlackBerry smart phone. Additional requirements and constraints may be found within the BlackBerry Internet Service 2.8 Documentation Kit. This feature is not supported on BlackBerry smart phones with BlackBerry® Connect^TM software.