Over New Year's a friend of mine came over with her new BlackBerry
7130c. She was telling me how she was paying around $30 dollars for
unlimited data service for it. I played around with it for a while,
checking out the data features, and noticed that she was getting full
data coverage, and the phone acknowledged that it was getting a usable
EDGE signal. So I was able to browse web pages on the BlackBerry, etc.
She also had a BlackBerry e-mail address.

I checked Cingular's website today in effort to find what plan she is
on, and I found for $29.99 there is the "BlackBerry Internet Service
Plan" which had the following details:
"Retrieve e-mail from up to 10 ISP accounts with a BlackBerry Wireless
Handheld. Send, receive, forward and reply to messages while on the go!
Service is not available at all times in all places. View Map and
Coverage Limitations. Does not include connectivity to a corporate
BlackBerry Enterprise Server."

So to me, that looks as if she's only supposed to be able to be sending
and receiving e-mail messages with her BlackBerry for that price.
However, she is on FamilyShare plan with a few other family members
that might have the MEdia Net unlimited feature added.

The reason I ask this is because I'm considering going with either the
BlackBerry 7130c or the Cingular 8525 as my next phone upgrade here in
a couple of weeks. I like the BlackBerry's features, but it was
somewhat awkward working in the little time that I was playing with it.
I haven't had the opportunity to be around a Cingular 8525, but by
looking at the reviews and product details, it seems to be the ultimate
solution.

Now to my messaging question. She does not have a text messaging plan
on her BlackBerry, but she was having a conversation with someone on
MSN if I remember correctly. With my RAZR, for example, the included
AIM client depletes messages off of your included messaging package (in
my case, 200 messages per month). I know that MSN has a "forwarding"
feature that you can sign up for that transfers MSN messages into
receivable text messages, but this is not what she had. It looked like
some sort of "on phone" MSN client that wasn't depleting messages off
her plan (considering she has none and pay per use is disabled).

So, does the Cingular 8525 posess such a feature as the MSN client that
the BlackBerry 7130c has? Also, can MEdia Net unlimited be configured
on the Cingular 8525 as well as the BlackBerry 7130c to function just
like the plans that Cingular wants you to sign up for?

Thanks,
Drew




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