Research In Motion and the Orange telecom have stopped selling the BlackBerry Bold in the United Kingdom because of software problems that led to connectivity issues.

The Bold is RIM's latest marquee smartphone and it has launched in more than 20 countries, but it has been repeatedly delayed in the United States because of software connectivity issues.

U.K. customers have been reporting reception issues and 3G data problems with the handset since its launch two months ago, and the wireless operator has now suspended shipping Bolds until there is improved software.

"Although the reported 3G concerns have been limited to a minority of Orange customers in the U.K., Orange U.K. and RIM both take customer concerns very seriously and felt it was prudent to introduce a maintenance release of software for Orange U.K. customers at this time," Orange said in a statement. "Orange U.K. and RIM apologize to customers for any inconvenience and expect to provide a software maintenance release soon."

Neither company would elaborate on what exactly is the problem, or how long it would take to fix the software glitches.

Since it was announced in May, the Bold has been highly anticipated because it offers Wi-Fi, GPS, a high-resolution screen, and the e-mail prowess that RIM's known for. But the handset has faced multiple delays for the U.S. market, causing RIM to miss analysts' expectations for the last quarter.

The handset is still undergoing testing on AT&T's networks to ensure that it won't face the same connectivity problems that plagued Apple's iPhone 3G earlier this summer, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis recently told The Associated Press.

"There's great scrutiny, as you might know, on that network and a certain device. So I guess everyone wants to be sure on every last test," Lazaridis said.