BlackBerry released an update to BBM for Android Thursday, which finally brought the ability for users to sign up using a phone number.
However, some users are discovering that there are issues when attempting to create a new BlackBerry ID using phone registration.
When attempting to sign up for a BlackBerry ID using a phone number, the following message may be  displayed:
“Unable to create your BlackBerry ID using a phone number. Please sign up using an email address, or try again later.”
The reason for this is that the phone number being used to sign up for the BlackBerry ID is missing or has the incorrect country code. To solve the issue, verify the correct country code has been selected when signing up for a BlackBerry ID.
BBM Protected
In order for a BBM user to be entitled for BBM Protected an administrator must enable the service using the Enterprise Identity console. BBM Protected administrator in the the Enterprise Identity console can only entitle a user to the BBM Protected service via a user associated email address.
This results in the fact that if the user is associated to BBM using a phone number, rather than an email address, the BBM Protected entitlement will be unable to validate the association.
Currently, users will need to sign up to BBM again using an email address rather than a phone number.
Personally, I would recommended that BBM Protected users avoid signing up using Phone registration at this point in time.
How to check if you signed up using phone registration
A BBM user can confirm they have signed up using a phone number by performing the following:
- Open BBM
- Select Settings from the menu
- Select Account
- The BBID field will display the phone number or email address used to sign up
Phone Registration will shortly be coming to BBM for iOS and BBM for BlackBerry 10.
