T-Mobile (US) and Blackberry Interntional
 

Call me a dinosaur, I don't care. I still love my Blackberry. When travel outside the US I call my provider, T-Mobile and ask them to turn on "International Blackberry" which is a feature I've used for years. For a (pro-rated) fee of $20/month additional I get use of e-mail and BBM without the usual "up to $15/mb" cost of data usage while roaming.

When I recently called to have this feature added for a trip I was put on hold for a long time while the agent looked for the feature. I was surprised that she couldn't find it. I'd just had it on a month or so ago. Eventually I was told that it is no longer offered, but that they would let me add it again as I've had it on my account before.

Is Blackberry (nee RIM) doing away with its original data model? Frankly, I see the reasonable cost of using my phone for e-mail internationally and having a real keyboard as the two remaining strengths of the platform. I've got a 9:p:p:p series phone. What are the international data options for the Q10/Z10 phones? Are other carriers doing the same as T-Mobile (US)? What else have I missed in this?

It's not Blackberry that's changing; it's T-mobile. They stopped offering the feature a while ago. I'm surprised you've had it as recently as a month ago.

I have the feature again now. What are people supposed to do if they travel internationally then, pay $15/mb for what they used to get for $1/day? I guess so. I can't imagine why T-Mobile disc:eek:ntinued this offering. I guess it cost too much, but I was under the impression that the whole scheme was run by Blackberry. Does AT&T offer a similar plan?

I think AT&T and Verizon offer international data plans where you just buy a data allowance for use when roaming. They are not Blackberry specific...though they might offer Blackberry plans too. I remember the days when T-mobile's international Blackberry plans were the only ones on the market.

I remember the good ole days when using BB with TMO. $19.99/month, pro-rated for international traveling, no charge for surfing net [they closed that loophole], and wifi, aka uma calling. Back then, TMO had the most competitive international package...

You may have to find the SOC code, and you'll basically need to talk to retentions to see if anyone can help. Even then, it took three tries with retentions to get my data* working.

* - Not BB, just downgrading my 4G data plan on my Samsung Galaxy S3 back to a grandfathered one.

BTW, the technology bb uses to connect to the RIM/enterprise servers also changes with the bb 10, its now plain jane encrypted https. So while T-mobile and co are certainly to blame for trying to squeeze some revenue out of you, once you move to the 10 version, there is no way for them to differentiate between bb data traffic and regular browsing data traffic.

That's what understood. So in other words they've changed their model such that there really is n:rolleyes:t much difference between their offerings and those of any other manufacturer.

Perhaps. In essence RIM is still offering encrypted access to your company mail server, and others generally do not even try to breach that subject. Of course RIM is happy to hand the decryption keys to any government agency that asks for them...

An acquaintance who works for Novartis just got told not to communicate any innovation related topic using email but instead use the KM plattform. As a tradeoff they all received iphones and can throw away their bberrys.

That's why I returned my Z10 to T-Mobile and bought an unlocked iPhone5 from Apple!