Digicel has issued an apology to its BlackBerry customers after thousands suffered a black out on their devices last month due to a software glitch.

The problem, which occurred on the manufacturer RIM's side, caused a service interruption on Tuesday December 22, with users unable to access their applications.

The previous week a similar problem affected smartphones.

A statement released by Digicel said that it was not an issue with its network and had in actual fact resulted in delayed or intermittent message delivery for BlackBerry users worldwide.

But it added that RIM had since taken action to restore service and also provided an updated version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57), advising customers who have downloaded or upgraded the service since December 14 to upgrade to the latest version to resolve the issue.

The updated version of BlackBerry Messenger can be downloaded from www.blackberry.com/messenger on the BlackBerry smartphone.

Wayne Caines, CEO of Digicel Bermuda, said: "We are cognisant that many of our customers rely in their BlackBerry devices as a primary means of communication."

"We are pleased that RIM has identified and rectified the problem."