Blackberry advise

Hi All

Is there anyway of having a Blackberry on PAYG. Not bothered with who, but
can't believe you need a contact to use 1.

Thanks

Glenn

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"glenn" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Hi All
>
> Is there anyway of having a Blackberry on PAYG. Not bothered with who, but
> can't believe you need a contact to use 1.
>
> Thanks
>
> Glenn

I've seen a couple of firmware hacks, but I'm pretty sure it isn't easy. You
could setup your own home blackberry server to allow sychronisation, but
there's a whole host of possible problemns en-route.

Kiddies, I will advise you on the above, if needed though, ask for advice.
Mr.Glenn!!

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 18:06:01 +0100, "glenn"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Is there anyway of having a Blackberry on PAYG. Not bothered with who, but
>can't believe you need a contact to use 1.

Yes, but it depends on what you want to do with it.

It will function perfectly well on PAYG as a GSM phone and very well
indeed as an SMS device.

I believe it will function as a TCP/IP Internet-connected device on
PAYG using GPRS but I can't be sure about this as I haven't persuaded
mine to function fully on GPRS yet. I've more or less given up with
Vodafone: PAYG GPRS may be possible with Vodafone but they don't seem
to be at all helpful like publishing APN details. Orange looks much
more hopeful and I'm awaiting one of their PAYG SIMs to try.

Hoever, if you want it to function as a push email device on PAYG, I
have grave doubts about whether this can be made to work in the
absence of a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server), even with
Blackberry's redirector software.

If anyone knows differently, please chip in.

Mike.

--
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

I understand that there are several free 'push' email services, Emoze
comes to mind, have you tried a search?

I've just done one now and got

http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/in...1202;topicseen

http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/04/free_push_email.html

Why specifically Blackberry?

As for PAYG APN's again a search will reveal all, they are widely
available on the relative telco sites

http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html

Regards

On 9 Jul 2006 01:09:43 -0700, "zacnici" <[email protected]> wrote:

>I understand that there are several free 'push' email services, Emoze
>comes to mind, have you tried a search?
>
>I've just done one now and got
>
>http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/in...1202;topicseen

I'd heard of funambol software - thanks for the reminder. I'll look
into that.

>http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/04/free_push_email.html

Emoze doesn't seem to support Blackberry yet.

>Why specifically Blackberry?

Because I have one!

>As for PAYG APN's again a search will reveal all, they are widely
>available on the relative telco sites
>
>http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html

Yes, but the sites disagree and I can't find the information on
Vodafone's site. For example, with Vodafone PAYT,
www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html and
http://www.cctvsafe.com/support/phone_settings.htm agree that the APN
name is ppp.vodafone.co.uk but one lists the username/password as
web/web and the other as [email protected]/user. Both settings
generate "data connection refused" on my Blackberry.

Mike.

--
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

Mike wrote:
> On 9 Jul 2006 01:09:43 -0700, "zacnici" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I understand that there are several free 'push' email services, Emoze
>> comes to mind, have you tried a search?
>>
>> I've just done one now and got
>>
>> http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/in...1202;topicseen
>
> I'd heard of funambol software - thanks for the reminder. I'll look
> into that.
>
>> http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/04/free_push_email.html
>
> Emoze doesn't seem to support Blackberry yet.
>
>> Why specifically Blackberry?
>
> Because I have one!
>
>> As for PAYG APN's again a search will reveal all, they are widely
>> available on the relative telco sites
>>
>> http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html
>
> Yes, but the sites disagree and I can't find the information on
> Vodafone's site. For example, with Vodafone PAYT,
> www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html and
> http://www.cctvsafe.com/support/phone_settings.htm agree that the APN
> name is ppp.vodafone.co.uk but one lists the username/password as
> web/web and the other as [email protected]/user. Both settings
> generate "data connection refused" on my Blackberry.
>
> Mike.
>
Have you setup your Blckberry acc on the website ? It maybe refusing
the connection at the BB end if it can't find your acc info.

Also, from a post a few weeks back, if it's a used BB and the old user
has already opened an acc using the pin it's not going to work at all as
it seems you can only use the pin once and you can't change it...

No_Spam <no_spam@no_spam.com> wrote:

> Have you setup your Blckberry acc on the website ? It maybe refusing
> the connection at the BB end if it can't find your acc info.

Do you mean at http://www.mobileemail.vodafone.net/ ?
It says that my IMEI and PIN aren't recognised. Which I think
means simply that my Blackberry wasn't supplied by Vodafone and
that therefore their system has no knowledge of it.

> Also, from a post a few weeks back, if it's a used BB and the old user
> has already opened an acc using the pin it's not going to work at all as
> it seems you can only use the pin once and you can't change it...

I saw that post but it doesn't apply to my case. Yesterday, I put
a colleague's contract corporate Vodafone SIM that was supplied *for
use with a Blackberry* (I think that's significcant) into my
Blackberry and it worked fine. I was even able to register on my
company's BES and have email pushed to it.

But my Blackberry doesn't work with my Vodafone PAYG SIM. The
logical conclusion is that there's some setting that's missing from
my SIM or the account associated with the SIM. Vodafone customer
service are courteous but simply not clued up enough about GPRS and
Blackberry to be able to offer any insight into the problem.

I think it's significant that the PAYT SIM causes the status
indicator on the Blackberry to go from "GSM" to "gprs" in lower-case
followed by "Data connection refused". With my colleague's SIM,
this goes from "GSM" to "gprs" to "GPRS" in upper-case and it works.

According to

http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgec...ch/2000/8021/7
925/8142/Support_-_Status_displayed_on_the_wireless_network_coverage_indicator
_is_gprs.html?nodeid=279356

(that URL may wrap), this means that:

Your BlackBerry device is not activated for specific services
or service packages on the wireless network.

Resolution

Contact your service provider to acquire information regarding
the services available to you.

I'm reaching the conclusion that Vodafone PAYT SIMs may work on
GPRS in "ordinary" devices but not in Blackberries, that there's
some network or SIM setting that's needed to make it work and
that Vodafone first-line CS don't know what this is.

I've tried an Orange PAYG SIM and have the same problem with that.
I don't really care which network I use, so I'd be delighted to hear
if anyone's had any success on any UK network with a PAYG SIM in a
Blackberry.

Mike.

Mike wrote:
> No_Spam <no_spam@no_spam.com> wrote:
>
>> Have you setup your Blckberry acc on the website ? It maybe refusing
>> the connection at the BB end if it can't find your acc info.
>
> Do you mean at http://www.mobileemail.vodafone.net/ ?
> It says that my IMEI and PIN aren't recognised. Which I think
> means simply that my Blackberry wasn't supplied by Vodafone and
> that therefore their system has no knowledge of it.
>
>> Also, from a post a few weeks back, if it's a used BB and the old user
>> has already opened an acc using the pin it's not going to work at all as
>> it seems you can only use the pin once and you can't change it...
>
> I saw that post but it doesn't apply to my case. Yesterday, I put
> a colleague's contract corporate Vodafone SIM that was supplied *for
> use with a Blackberry* (I think that's significcant) into my
> Blackberry and it worked fine. I was even able to register on my
> company's BES and have email pushed to it.
>
> But my Blackberry doesn't work with my Vodafone PAYG SIM. The
> logical conclusion is that there's some setting that's missing from
> my SIM or the account associated with the SIM. Vodafone customer
> service are courteous but simply not clued up enough about GPRS and
> Blackberry to be able to offer any insight into the problem.
>
> I think it's significant that the PAYT SIM causes the status
> indicator on the Blackberry to go from "GSM" to "gprs" in lower-case
> followed by "Data connection refused". With my colleague's SIM,
> this goes from "GSM" to "gprs" to "GPRS" in upper-case and it works.
>
> According to
>
> http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgec...ch/2000/8021/7
> 925/8142/Support_-_Status_displayed_on_the_wireless_network_coverage_indicator
> _is_gprs.html?nodeid=279356
>
> (that URL may wrap), this means that:
>
> Your BlackBerry device is not activated for specific services
> or service packages on the wireless network.
>
> Resolution
>
> Contact your service provider to acquire information regarding
> the services available to you.
>
> I'm reaching the conclusion that Vodafone PAYT SIMs may work on
> GPRS in "ordinary" devices but not in Blackberries, that there's
> some network or SIM setting that's needed to make it work and
> that Vodafone first-line CS don't know what this is.
>
> I've tried an Orange PAYG SIM and have the same problem with that.
> I don't really care which network I use, so I'd be delighted to hear
> if anyone's had any success on any UK network with a PAYG SIM in a
> Blackberry.
>
> Mike.

Yes, the lower case gprs means it's getting gprs coverage but can't
access the bb server.

You maybe right in saying that the service may not be available to payg
customers. On Orange there's a product that has to go on contract acc's
that give access to the bb server and then doesn't charge for the data
usage. that item is only available for contract acc's.

I would think that even if there was a way to get it working on payg
you'd find it had used all your credit in a day, it's talking to the
server every few seconds and even if it's not grabbing any mail there's
still an amount of data that has to be transmitted which is going to
mount up over a day...

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:59:02 +0100, No_Spam <no_spam@no_spam.com>
wrote:

>Yes, the lower case gprs means it's getting gprs coverage but can't
>access the bb server.
>
>You maybe right in saying that the service may not be available to payg
>customers. On Orange there's a product that has to go on contract acc's
>that give access to the bb server and then doesn't charge for the data
>usage. that item is only available for contract acc's.
>
>I would think that even if there was a way to get it working on payg
>you'd find it had used all your credit in a day, it's talking to the
>server every few seconds and even if it's not grabbing any mail there's
>still an amount of data that has to be transmitted which is going to
>mount up over a day...

That's a point. I don't understand, though, why it won't work on
ordinary GPRS either, doing Web browsing, telnet or any other TCP/IP
activity via the carrier's APN.

I'm wondering if the design of the device deliberately disables all
GPRS functionality if it's unable to connect to the BB server. That
would be consistent with some reports that a SIM that works perfectly
on GPRS in a smart phone doesn't work at all on GPRS when put into a
Blackberry.

Mike.

--
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem