Blackberry and Roaming

Forums › Legacy mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Web OS, Symbian, Meego, Blackberry) › Blackberry and Roaming

m3mberman

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#9760 11-Oct-2006 14:35

hey guys,
just a quick question about blackberry and roaming. i am considering on acquiring a black berry soon and was wondering if its a good idea to buy the handset overseas and then stick a VFNZ sim card into it. also wanted to know how would the whole wireless email part of it work considering i do not own a email server.i did contemplate getting push onto my apache but its just too much hassle for me to deal with and the blackberry email service from VFNZ seems much more straight forward for me.
i need to use the handset in asia and australia also. so how would the picture look like is my question and what would be your suggestions?

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#48305 11-Oct-2006 14:49

I suggest you ask Vodafone if you are allowed to connected imported RIM Blackberry devices to their network. I know it's been done before, but not without a friend of a friend being involved.

As for roaming, Blackberry charges are currently $30/MB regardless of roaming to a Vodafone network overseas or not, so I wouldn't use it if you expect many e-mails, or unless you have a business justification (and expenses coverage).

As for the push e-mail, there are hosted service here in New Zealand that will work seamlessly with Windows Mobile - check www.anywhereexchange.co.nz for example.

timmyh

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#48314 11-Oct-2006 15:42

Couple of answers for you.

As long as the BlackBerry device you buy overseas isn't SIM locked to that network then you will be able to use it with a Voda NZ SIM card fine.

I assume your email is hosted with some ISP or webmai provider? In that case you would need the BlackBerry Internet Service which will cost $35.00 per month + GST. This will allow you to have up to 10 hosted mail accounts pushed to your BlackBerry. You would synch contacts and calendar directly with your computer.

As for roaming while it does cost $30.00 per MB most BB users only use between 2-3MB in total per month. So one month's usage while overseas with your BB on all the time is likely to cost you around $90 + $35 = $125. Any other way of accessing your email over mobile data while roaming is likely to cost a lot more than this.

For more information visit www.vodafone.co.nz/blackberry.

Cheers,
Tim Hayward
Product Manager
Vodafone NZ

chiefie

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#48315 11-Oct-2006 15:55

OT: I think it's great to see Tim posted an official "how-to" to m3mberman's query. It's great to see that some corporate members make use of forum/blog to extend the communication with the public. I do hope this can continue and strengthen the relationship with the customers. Kudos to Tim!

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timmyh

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#48316 11-Oct-2006 16:17

Thanks and my pleasure. Have been an occasional GZ contributor for a couple of years. I don't expect to be any kind of 'official' Vodafone responder on GZ but very happy to add information where it makes sense.

Cheers,
Tim

johnr

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#48331 11-Oct-2006 17:23

Timmyh has hit the nail on the head the BB would use very little data while roaming

BigFella

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#48340 11-Oct-2006 18:07

Chiefie, there are quite a few Vodafone lurkers here :)

sat

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#48351 11-Oct-2006 19:58

timmyh: Couple of answers for you.

As long as the BlackBerry device you buy overseas isn't SIM locked to that network then you will be able to use it with a Voda NZ SIM card fine.

I assume your email is hosted with some ISP or webmai provider? In that case you would need the BlackBerry Internet Service which will cost $35.00 per month + GST. This will allow you to have up to 10 hosted mail accounts pushed to your BlackBerry. You would synch contacts and calendar directly with your computer.

As for roaming while it does cost $30.00 per MB most BB users only use between 2-3MB in total per month. So one month's usage while overseas with your BB on all the time is likely to cost you around $90 + $35 = $125. Any other way of accessing your email over mobile data while roaming is likely to cost a lot more than this.

For more information visit www.vodafone.co.nz/blackberry.

Cheers,
Tim Hayward
Product Manager
Vodafone NZ

Well done for your statement especially your Professional signature it is nice to see someone throw some weight behind their post

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chiefie

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#48354 11-Oct-2006 20:43

BigFella:

Chiefie, there are quite a few Vodafone lurkers here :)

Yes i know there a lot of lurkers, telecom, vodafone, telstraclear, woosh... except econet. hehe

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m3mberman

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#48383 11-Oct-2006 23:47

thanks a lot for the info.i am truly flattered might i add to get a weighted answer for my question. i am currently looking at picking up either the new blackberry pearl or the 7130g both of which will not be sim locked.im guessing i would have to use the email service from another provider overseas if i wanted to use the wireless email service before i get to nz where i can transfer it over to VFNZ once i get here.
any suggestions if i should get it or not ;)

chiefie

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#48389 12-Oct-2006 07:49

why blackberry and not WM5 devices? I actually reckon WM5 devices are more flexible in terms of what email services you want to go for.

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freitasm

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#48400 12-Oct-2006 09:11

I think the reason why BlackBerry roaming is more expensive than simple data roaming might be related to the fact the indeed they use less data. Otherwise the device uses the same data channel, except that it must trombone through a server somewhere, to which the operators has to pay license fees.

As chiefie noted, consider how less rich is the BlackBerry environment. For example you can't browse a website if you are using the BlackBerry Internet Service, only the Enterprise edition. If you receive a link on an e-mail you can't visit it.

Take it at face value, that is, an e-mail device really, and you receive a cut down version of those e-mails, hence the low traffic. If you want anything more than this then I'd consider a PDA Phone, such as the Pocket PCs or a Palm OS device.

As I noted, there are hosted Exchange services around. If you don't wanna pay there are free ones as well such as http://live.mail2web.com/, through the folks on www.mail2web.com. The difference is that www.aywhereexchange.co.nz will allow you to host your own domain mail records and use your own domain name server.

But we are talking about a more flexible approach here...