The updater issues are intermittant and no-one knows when they will strike, hopefully soon they will all be sorted out.
In the meantime if someone isn't patching between cities then it shouldn't be so much of a problem.
There is no need to reinstall the game - the updater issue is an EA server issue.
If your friends are still having a problem, they should post in the Technical Advice forum giving full details of what their problem is and exactly what error messages they are receiving.
Polly