Mobilicity doesn't offer BES Connectivity for BlackBerry, why not? Opinions Please!!!

[voxaura]

I know that Blackberry is on its way down, unless they offer something extraordinary and out of this world, but many people still use Blackberry and many people have a requirement to use BlackBerry's that need to connect to BES and their work servers. Some of these people also want to switch to Mobilicity. We sent a message out directly to Stewart Lyons to ask about this but got a response from one of the local reps stating that Mobilicity is not interested in going after that market, adn have no plans to bring this billable feature. Strange how a carrier would not want to capture a valuable segment of customers that are willing to pay for a service. The even stranger this is, that BES was available as a $5 feature for like 2 weeks, then disapeared.

Here is the email we sent to Stewart Lyons. What do you think about this topic?

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Hello Stewart,



I am emailing you as no one at Mobilicity seems to be able to answer my question, or provide any feedback.



My question is around BES or BlackBerry Enterprise Server Connectivity. Will Mobilicity offer this? Mobilicity offered this for a very brief moment last year and we had good traction with many potential Small Biz type clients that wanted to use Mobilicity, but needed their BlackBerry to connect to their company BES, however once they were ready to sign up for a Mobilicity phone the ability to add on the BES had disappeared.



Any update on this? We target many small biz type clients and we would be able to sign over a lot more customers. Our customers are will to pay $5 for the ability to add this feature. i know that it was possible before, anyway to bring the feature back??? Wind offers this feature and we had to let several customer who needed Blackberry walk away because of this. Thank You in advance.

Best regards,

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Our response to the local rep after they told us that Mobilicity is not going to bring back BES
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Thanks for the quick response. I think it is a bad decision that Mobilicity has decided to pass up on the potential opportunity of gaining professional customers in the 20 - 45 year old demographic. These are high value customers that have money but are value concious, most have credit cards, and the likely hood for churn is quite low. Customers that require BES are not just business customers, but many are people who work for professional organizations with BYOD (Bring your own device) policies, a major trend in wireless these days.

Our store is located in one of the most densely populated areas in the downtown Vancouver core, we make a huge effort to convince people off of their BlackBerry and move into Android devices to break the dependency on BlackBerry and BES, but quite honestly we have had to turn away many potential customers due to the fact that we were not able to offer them what they really needed in a device, most of these people end up walking over to Wind to find they offer the BES feature for $5.

All that it takes is a Value added feature that Mobilicity can charge for and add to the revenue line to increase ARPU. It is odd that this was taken out. I know that internally the staff at Mobilicity Head Office use BES on their Blackberry devices, not sure why you wouldn't allow people to pay for a service that already exists.


From the entire sales team

[Mann Incognito]

It shouldn't come as any surprise that Mobilicity doesn't offer BES. Not because of any doubt regarding RIM's future but because it seems like they don't want to get into business services right now and frankly their footprint doesn't warrant supplying such a service. Although WIND offers BES as an option and has a business division adoption has been less than stellar and I'm sure Mobilicity is watching this with some interest.

Sent from my BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps using HowardForums

[xtachx]

It shouldn't come as any surprise that Mobilicity doesn't offer BES. Not because of any doubt regarding RIM's future but because it seems like they don't want to get into business services right now and frankly their footprint doesn't warrant supplying such a service. Although WIND offers BES as an option and has a business division adoption has been less than stellar and I'm sure Mobilicity is watching this with some interest.

Sent from my BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps using HowardForums

Mobilicity DOES OFFER BES!!

Its not advertised on their site, but send them an email and they will add it. BIS+BES = $15

[Mann Incognito]

$15??? That's excessive! BIS is included on all data plans at WIND and BES is a $5 add on.

I know there can be price differences for add ons but 200% more?

[xtachx]

$15??? That's excessive! BIS is included on all data plans at WIND and BES is a $5 add on.
I know their can be price differences for add ons but 200% more?

To be honest, it would be $0 if you use Android and WP7. RIM should just scrap all these nonsense protocols and make a BB simpler and fun to use.

[weedb0y]

Honestly, likelihood of someone paying for their own BES is slim. Most corporate BES users have their cellphones + data paid by the company and 'monitored' as well. In that case, the big 3 are the best suited as typical corp plan ranges anywhere from $75-150. Well out of Dave's target market. Reliability needs to be 100% before they can offer a business class service.

Wind is trying to experiment but I doubt any firm that relies on 99.9% uptime will go for the small players.

[kav2001c]

Lower uptime + smaller footprint = not many biz clients