Blackberry Roaming SIM
 

This SIM is not a particularly good deal, but it provides Blackberry prepaid roaming in a number of countries:

http://www.valuesphere.com/intouchsmartcards/gprs.html

Blackberry needs certain ports opened and forwarded to RIM's data center so most prepaid data SIMs don't work. I'm just passing it on because everyone knows a Blackberry junkie.

uhm it's still cheaper to use a wind prepaid sim than this, pity I thought I'd found gold:eek:

Is Wind's prepaid SIM Blackberry friendly?

what means Blackberry friendly?
Isnt a full open internet access enough for blackberries?

Chris

All I know is that for the last few months they have a payg monthly plan, and just recently the lowest rates for roaming in Europe and the states, whether they have good reception I don't know, but seeing as I have 2 berries I'm thinking of getting their sim, plus the fact the first 3 months are free, it's worth a go, if I don't like it I'll just cancel my account, I still have Vodafone payg..;-)

No. Blackberry requires special ports open back to Blackberry. For corporate users, you will then have a Blackberry server linked to RIMs server in Canada via a encrypted connection. This is called a BES or Blackberry Enterprise Server connection.

For most individual, you will have a Blackberry Individual Server connection which is basically a personal account on RIM's server programmed to pull your e-mail. You could also have a Blackberry Desktop program running on your machine back home which pushes the e-mail out to you.

Technically a straight data connection cannot handle Blackberry. When Etisilat first offered data service plans, you could connect to Blackberry on a non-Blackberry plan because they left some settings wide open. Maybe Wind is doing the same thing. I don't know.

The reason I plugged this not great Blackberry deal was because most data packages don't handle Blackberry. I don't have a Blackberry (I have Symbian and Windows Mobile devices) so I don't have personal knowledge on this.

All cards that i have here have no port restrictions at all.
Neiter wind nor our german cards.
In other countries it seems to be more common that they cripple the internet access by proxys or firewalls. But on Wind definetely not. They even assign public IP adresses that you can connect from outside.

Chris

Blackberry is different from most connections and that is what I am not making clear. There has to be a special setup on the cell provider's side. A few providers leave this setup open to all data providers, but it is generally through error or omission, not intentionally. There are a number of posts over on Ho Fo where people are struggling to find ways to use a Blackberry without having a Blackberry plan. Most of these individuals resort to the Google Mail client for Blackberry.

ah ok. they seem to be very proud of making a non compatible system and drain the money out of peoples pockets :) I never understood why blackberries are such a hype cause basically its just a nice looking IMAP-IDLE, right?

Chris

You've got two groups of Blackberry users. The first group is the corporate types who are either given the unit or told that it is the only (or at least preferred) choice. It works for them and they rarely pay the bill.

Then you have people who see all the corporate folks using it and think it must be the right answer. Even though they don't have a Blackberry Enterprise server, they sign up for it and pay way too much to tap into their pop e-mail account over a Blackberry.

Blackberry takes a piece of all Blackberry plans therefore the price is higher. You can sometimes coast on Blackberry if: (a) you have a Blackberry plan in another country; (b) you have a Blackberry Enterprise Account; and, (c) the network you are on is poorly configured. Otherwise, you are roaming.

The one thing I have to say about Blackberry is that they have cheaper e-mail roaming than anyone else. On TMobile USA, you can pay $19 more a month and have Blackberry e-mail service anywhere in the world for one flat rate.