vB Easy Archive - Confused about Blackberry plans

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Confused about Blackberry plans
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Posted by: PabloTX

I am planning on moving to Cingular soon, but cannot figure out the differences in the Blackberry plans.

I see that there are Personal Plans

BlackBerry® Personal Plan for $35
BlackBerry® Personal Max for $45
BlackBerry® Personal Max w/UNLIMITED M2M Messaging for $50

But there is nothing that states the differences between the three. Obviously, the last has unlimited messaging, but what is the difference between the first two?

Also, there is BlackBerry® Connect

PDA Connect for BlackBerry® Connect Unlimited is $50.

What's the difference between this and the Personal plan? Is this for use with a BES server?

The site does a great job of listing all of the options, but does a poor job of stating what the differences are with each and which is best for a particular phone or application?

And this is just for Blackberries. What will the iPhone need? What about Treos?

Posted by: kylekim

I had a doozy of a time trying to decipher all the plan packages when I opted to switch over from Verizon. I'm not 100% on this but from my understanding ...

BlackBerry® Personal Plan for $35 = BIS plan w/o a voice plan.
BlackBerry® Personal Max for $45 = BIS plan + 1500 SMS/MMS messages w/o a voice plan.
BlackBerry® Personal Max w/UNLIMITED M2M Messaging for $50 = BIS plan + unlimited messaging w/o a voice plan.

If you add a voice plan with your BB plan, subtract $5 from those plans. No idea what the heck the PDA connect plan is used for. Hope this help.

Posted by: steva11

these are add-ons to voice plans

29.99 gives unlimited bis data
39.99 gives unlimited bis data and 1500 messages

44.99 gives unlimited bes data
54.99 gives unlimited bes data and 1500 messages

blackberry connect is for non-rim devices like palm/nokia running blackberry software

Posted by: PabloTX

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarifications. Much appreciated.

Posted by: zoomkobe

On a related note, do I have to get a Blackberry plan if I plan on getting the Curve?

I currently have a Media Max plan. Will the Curve work with Media Max?

Posted by: steva11

no. the blackberry plans provision a blackberry.net APN which is needed to access the RIM network and get blackberry features like internet/email. you can use internet/email with opera mini and different email clients, but it defeats the purpose of getting a blackberry.

Posted by: PabloTX

But what about going the other way? If I were to get a Curve (or Pearl) as the main device, what would happen if I were to stick the SIM in a backup phone when going somewhere where I didn't want to worry about the BlackBerry getting damaged? I assume I would still have data access, correct?

Posted by: steva11

yeah, you still would most devices run of a wap/isp apn. you still get that with a blackberry plan, along with the blackberry apn, so if you put the sim (with the blackberry plan) in another device, you'll still get data access.

Posted by: PabloTX

Great. Thanks again.

Posted by: DubDub

Quote:

Originally Posted by steva11

yeah, you still would most devices run of a wap/isp apn. you still get that with a blackberry plan, along with the blackberry apn, so if you put the sim (with the blackberry plan) in another device, you'll still get data access.

You would have Internet access but no BB email access.

Posted by: fLEkz

A little confused here,

After reading this post I decided to get the BlackBerry® Internet Service Plan for $29.99 (As per AT&T's site).

I called AT&T earlier this morning and ordered the Curve and BB plan, etc. I called back a few hours after (to confirm the order) and was told that the rep actually added the BlackBerry Unlimited plan for $29.99? Is this the same plan as the BIS plan on the website? According to the website BlackBerry Unlimited is $44.99?

Did the phone rep make a mistake or are they same plan?

Thanks for any help.

Posted by: ivwshane

The bis for $30 is unlimited for personal use (pop3, imap), the bes $45 unlimited is for use with your corporate email.

If you just plan on using it to access your aol or comcast then the $30 plan is for you.

Posted by: RF9

After you get the phone and the BIS plan is added. log in to OLAM and just check the features on your "add remove" features to make sure it's the $30 plan. You can call CS and ask them "Is my blackberry plan the $30 one" if you want to confirm.

Posted by: fLEkz

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivwshane

The bis for $30 is unlimited for personal use (pop3, imap), the bes $45 unlimited is for use with your corporate email.

If you just plan on using it to access your aol or comcast then the $30 plan is for you.

I see. So they are probably the same plans then. Once my account is active, I'll double check online.

Does the $30 unlimited for personal use include Web Browsing access? I wish AT&T would be more detailed on their 'BlackBerry® Services' page, or include some kind of comparison chart.

Posted by: ivwshane

Yes, any bb unlimited plan will also give you unlimited internet as well.

Posted by: fLEkz

Thanks for the help yall. I just verified that I got the 29.99 plan

Posted by: jaredaggie

What is the difference in BIS and BES? I plan to use mine to view pages in our companies internal network. I'm not concerned about how I get my email, just that I can see it when I want to, mainly I just need to view the web pages on our internal network, and it seems having a blackberry is the only way to do that from a smart phone/pda.

Also, I use quite a bit of text messages. I understand I can give people my phone's email address and have them text that instead of the phone number, and that will then charge off of data, and be free instead of charging a SMS... is that correct?

Any direction on which blackberry plan I should use would be very much appreciated.

Thanks, Jared

Posted by: henryhank

You only need BES if your company is running the Blackberry Enterprise Server to deliver email, etc. If they aren't running BES, you don't need a BES plan. Go with BIS.

Posted by: RF9

I don't think you can view web pages inside a corporate firewalled network. As far as I know when using the web browser, you're still web browsing from out on the internet. Maybe IT can set up web browsing through the secure BB connection back in to the firewall? I know they don't do that at my company.

Talk to your IT department and ask them specifically if you can access internal web pages through a blackberry. If so then clearly they can do it.
If so, they most likely have a corporate BES (Blackberry Enterprise server.) In which case to connect to that you have to use a BES plan.
BIS does not allow you to connect to internal corporate servers. It only allows you to connect to blackberry's internet servers for getting email from normal ISPs like Yahoo, AOL, GMail, etc. and of course internet web browsing.

Yes, people can email you directly to your blackberry.
You can also install an IM program and use Yahoo, AOL, or others over data (not text messaging.)
IM+ by shape services http://www.shapeservices.com/ has one of the better ones that works on almost all IM services. But it's not free (worth it though.)
RIM (blackberry) has released some free clients that work specifically with AOL and some others. You can not use the Yahoo one on AT&T though, it's not supported yet.

First step is talk to your company's administrators and ask them about blackberry access. if you have a BES server there and can you access internal web pages.
If so, you need the BES plan.

Hopefully others can chime in with advice here.

Posted by: golfing021

I understand these BB plans for the most part.
I can get the unlimited data, 1,500 texts and unlimited M2M texts. But what if I need unlimited texts to all carriers? How do I do that with spending the least $ ?

Posted by: RF9

I don't know of a better solution than:
1) Get your blackberry BES or BIS plan.
2) Get Unlimited text messaging for $20 added to the BES/BIS plan.

If you know other people with blackberries you can send messages between blackberries with via a "PIN" message (just like a text message) but doesn't count against your text messaging. It's a BB to BB thing over data. I'm not sure if this helps you.

Posted by: kuj

My wife has been contemplating on getting a BB also but needs unlimited messaging. So, as I understand it, it's like this:

BIS (unlimited BB data and MEdiaNet) = $29.99
Messaging Unlimited (IM, text, pic) = $19.99

Total monthly = $29.99 + $19.99 = $49.98

Is that right?

Would she be able to switch to a different phone (Blackjack) and still access the internet?

Posted by: briareus

Quote:

Originally Posted by RF9

I don't think you can view web pages inside a corporate firewalled network. As far as I know when using the web browser, you're still web browsing from out on the internet.

It may not be set up in your case but the ability to browse the corporate intranet is a feature of BES/MDS.

Posted by: ivwshane

Quote:

Originally Posted by kuj

My wife has been contemplating on getting a BB also but needs unlimited messaging. So, as I understand it, it's like this:

BIS (unlimited BB data and MEdiaNet) = $29.99
Messaging Unlimited (IM, text, pic) = $19.99

Total monthly = $29.99 + $19.99 = $49.98

Is that right?

Would she be able to switch to a different phone (Blackjack) and still access the internet?

Those prices assumes she has a voice plan as well. If not add $5 to the total (no voice minutes).

And yes she will be able to use any other phone and still access the internet with the bb plan.