[Komoto]

I have been searching for an answer to some questions i have regarding this, i have found information, but nothing that answers my questions specifically.

• I currently have a Bold 9900 with a blackberry dataplan (I think it is an unlimited plan, will have to double check)
• I live in Greece and my contract is with Cosmote.
• I travel alot for work, mostly in the EU and UK, at least one week every month I am abroad.
• I am self employed, have my own company, so I am not part of some giant corporate with servers.
• I do not really use my phone a lot for data, mainly emails (8 accounts), bbm, whatsapp, trading, and some browsing,(mainly crackberry, n4bb and cnbc, who all have mobile versions of their website) social networking, etc.

i am aware of the benefits i get with my current blackberry plan. (encrypted data incl emails, compressed data, security, no data roaming fees when travelling abroad, reduced battery usage due to push email, and emails received installing because of Push email etc). Are these correct?

What i have understood from the information i have read so far:

1. The Blackberry 10 phones do not require a blackberry plan, you can get a normal data plan from your carrier.
2. BES functions for those who are on BES and their company has the BES 10 software setup on servers.

now the questions about BIS.

1. I would prefer to keep the benefits i get from BIS.
2. What benefits from BIS will still be there if buy a Z10 and transfer my contract over.
3. Will BIS be automatically transferred over to my Z10 when i transfer my SIM over?
4. Will BIS be automatically converted into a normal data plan when i transfer my sim over?
5. Can i voluntarily carry on with BIS? So if i buy a Z10 and transfer my sim over to the new phone, can I opt in to carry on paying for the blackberry data plan and still receive the benefits.

I have never received an extraordinary large bill for my phone. I keep data roaming on when i am travelling and do what i would do in Greece normally. I am sure it is because of some of these benefits. Also security is important for me, so i prefer the arrangement I have at the moment.

I would consider myself averagely tech savvy and would appreciate if someone could shed some light on this.

Thanks in advance

[robsteve]

Your carrier is the only one that can answer your questions. In Canada, your regular BIS data plan will work with the Z10, but I don't think you get any special BIS features. I am referring to the full BIS plan, not the social plans.

It does look like the carrier has the option of using BIS to differentiate BBM data from regular so they can offer unlimited BBM video chat as a feature.

In regards to roaming data use, that is an unknown until a few more people roam with their phones.

[Komoto]

I didnt realise the carriers had such a big say.

If i dont get the BIS benefits, I guess this means i will get zapped with data roaming fees the next time i go abroad with a z10?

In canada, does this mean your emails and data are no longer encrypted?

Anyone used the Z10 abroad yet and has any more information about data roaming?

[nyplaya610]

These are good questions, there are other threads about this but they don't have clear answers. I wish blackberry had a rep going to forums and answering questions we may have.

[Komoto]

Is there no chance that the crackberry team can forward these to Blackberry and get back to us.

Although the article they wrote did help, it still really doesn't answer my questions.

[aldebaran12]

I didnt realise the carriers had such a big say.

If i dont get the BIS benefits, I guess this means i will get zapped with data roaming fees the next time i go abroad with a z10?

You get zapped with BIS and OS7 too, I speak from my own experiences. Data roaming is data roaming regardless.

[Komoto]

You get zapped with BIS and OS7 too, I speak from my own experiences. Data roaming is data roaming regardless.

Really?? All these years i was under the impression that this somehow bypassed the whole data roaming issue.

If this is the case I am that little bit happier. My phone should arrive next week, before it is released officially by the carriers in Greece. I have to go and get a micro sim, will ask them about the data plan issue then.

[Omnitech]

I didnt realise the carriers had such a big say.

If i dont get the BIS benefits, I guess this means i will get zapped with data roaming fees the next time i go abroad with a z10?

That depends on your carrier. One of the reasons that Blackberry has been popular in the developing world is because many carriers in those countries had/have low-priced BIS plans that had no data caps or roaming fees. But because the carriers would prefer to make more money, and because it could be said that Blackberry cost those carriers revenue compared to competitive products which all required traditional data plans, my belief is one key reason Blackberry is moving away from BIS is because carriers prefer it that way, since they make more money without it. If Blackberry hadn't changed that in BB10, the chance that carriers would promote BB10 would be slim, and even more business would go towards the competition.

In canada, does this mean your emails and data are no longer encrypted?

I believe this is an unfortunately popular misconception. BIS never featured end-to-end data encryption. That is a BES feature. Besides the cost issues mentioned above, the primary benefit of BIS from what I can see is the "pseudo push" collection of email from old POP3 servers and quick delivery to the phone without the need for the phone to do continuous polling, and data compression.

For most people today, those are not imperative features, the benefits are not as clear-cut as they were 5 or 7 years ago, and no other providers have such things anyway so even without them Blackberry is not at a competitive disadvantage compared to the other platforms out there today.

[Omnitech]

Here's an article that gives a good overview of what is or is not encypted on BIS and BES connections (Date: 2010 - does not apply to BB10 obviously):

FAQ: What Communication Is Encrypted on Your BlackBerry - BerryReview

[kill_9]

I didnt realise the carriers had such a big say.

If i dont get the BIS benefits, I guess this means i will get zapped with data roaming fees the next time i go abroad with a z10?

Basically, yes, there will be an increase in the data traffic while roaming if enabled on the smartphone. The lack of built-in data compression accounts for this change.

In canada, does this mean your emails and data are no longer encrypted?

Email sent from a BlackBerry Z10 for an account not associated with BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) is not encrypted. However, even on a BIS data plan the encryption was a simple shared public key which was used for every BlackBerry smartphone. There is a way to encrypt non-BES10 email but it requires both sender and receiver share their public encryption keys with each other; most people will not bother with the hassle.

Anyone used the Z10 abroad yet and has any more information about data roaming?

[kill_9]

That depends on your carrier. One of the reasons that Blackberry has been popular in the developing world is because many carriers in those countries had/have low-priced BIS plans that had no data caps or roaming fees. ... my belief is one key reason Blackberry is moving away from BIS is because carriers prefer it that way, since they make more money without it.

This is a First World problem. In the Third World the value of BIS for the carriers was a growing subscriber base with little need to upgrade the infrastructure - clearly a win for the people and for the carriers. BlackBerry is keeping BIS for BlackBerry 5/6/7 smartphones for this reason and will unlikely market BlackBerry 10 smartphones in these less affluent countries. In Canada, for example, BIS cut into the greed of the wireless carriers and they finally forced the hand of BlackBerry.

[Wilkerson4492]

Just curious, how many other non-enterprise users would be be willing to pay a monthly fee for BES like security features? Not that I have anything sensitive I am sending but I personally would pay a couple of extra bucks a month to know all my data (emails, BBM's etc) are being encrypted.

[canuckcam]

Then you can use a hosted BES, but even EAS is encrypted. While BIS to your legacy BB is encrypted, keep in mind that doesn't necessarily mean your emails on whatever server you're on is secure and whether the path from that server to BIS is encrypted.

[Omnitech]

This is a First World problem. In the Third World the value of BIS for the carriers was a growing subscriber base with little need to upgrade the infrastructure - clearly a win for the people and for the carriers. BlackBerry is keeping BIS for BlackBerry 5/6/7 smartphones for this reason and will unlikely market BlackBerry 10 smartphones in these less affluent countries. In Canada, for example, BIS cut into the greed of the wireless carriers and they finally forced the hand of BlackBerry.

Two of the BB10 launch cities were Johannesburg and Jakarta, and Indonesia has, according to some studies, about the strongest interest in BB10 worldwide. The Z10 is also now selling in Pakistan, is due to be launched in India on 2/25, is apparently already available in Vietnam and Nigerian carriers are already taking pre-orders. I don't think your claim that Blackberry is not going to promote BB10 in developing countries is very accurate.

Indonesians are very interested in Blackberry 10 (study)
Hungry for a BlackBerry 10, Indonesians Must Sit Tight | The Jakarta Globe
MTN to deliver BlackBerry 10 smartphone to Nigerians
BlackBerry Z10 to hit shops straight after BlackBerry 10 launch (Vietnam)
blackberry10 pre-orders on Vodacom (South Africa)

[Omnitech]

Then you can use a hosted BES, but even EAS is encrypted. While BIS to your legacy BB is encrypted, keep in mind that doesn't necessarily mean your emails on whatever server you're on is secure and whether the path from that server to BIS is encrypted.

Blackberry is even using EAS for BES10 now, so even if you're a BES user with BB10 your traffic will be running over that same mechanism.

BIS to legacy BB's, BTW, is NOT encrypted. It's an unfortunately popular misconception. See the link I posted above.

[saifrahman]

On Z10, there are no service books for your emails, contacts and calendars anymore. Unfortunately, if you don't want to use IMAP protocol, you get no 'PUSH' with pop setup. The minimum Sync period in the pop setup is 15 minutes, a far cry from instant email. Blackberry invented push and it seems that with z10 it has killed it's own invention by taking BIS out for the general, non-bes users at large. Z 10 is more of an Android/iphone in this respect which I find it to be disappointing.

If BIS is no more then is BBM also freely available to any data plan? Don't know it yet, but have read that people switching from other platforms can continue to use their data plans. Does it mean that BBM also works on their regular data plans?

[Omnitech]

Unfortunately, if you don't want to use IMAP protocol, you get no 'PUSH' with pop setup. The minimum Sync period in the pop setup is 15 minutes, a far cry from instant email.

BIS was never "push" for POP3, though it was better than what was offered by the competition. RIM spent a lot of money building and operating a huge network to, among other things, constantly poll POP servers for new messages on behalf of mobile devices.

But POP3 is a 25-year-old protocol that is less and less commonly used today, RIM suffered lots of negative press over the occasional BIS outages, running that network is a large overhead, and BIS placed a variety of constraints on the way data was received on Blackberry devices that handicapped them in other ways. For example, there is NO WAY that the Z10 browser would have the good performance it has today if it were required to route all web traffic through BIS as was the case with legacy BBOS devices.

If BIS is no more then is BBM also freely available to any data plan?

Yes.

[saifrahman]

With BIS, you just had to give your userid and password and the rest was taken care by blackberry. The email was pushed almost perfectly and instantaneously. Since I archive my emails, the pop on desktop worked reasonably well save a few misses occassionaly. I tried the IMAP option when i got my z10 a few weeks ago; however, with IMAP on my z 10, the desktop pop3 accounts on my outlook stopped receiving emails altogether. So I am back on pop on z10 and my outlook /pop3 accounts are receiving emails again. The trade-off is NO push email with pop setup on z10. Not entirely happy with this situation.

[Omnitech]

with IMAP on my z 10, the desktop pop3 accounts on my outlook stopped receiving emails altogether.

You need to learn more about what options are available and how to make the best use of them. There are a lot of people that falsely assume that just because BB10 doesn't work precisely like some old device worked, that it's inferior. In most cases, that's just wrong.

There are lots of posts here about how to do that, I just don't have the time/energy to spend 10 minutes looking them all up right now. Here's an overview of email retrieval options to get you started:

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...yncing-777774/

[Komoto]

I took the plunge and brought the phone to Greece, where it currently hasnt been released yet.

There was data when i swapped the sims over. It seems as though the BIS even when it has transferred does not allow data to be transferred, not emails or browsing.

All i did was added a data plan onto my contract and it all worked. The next thing i will experiment with, is that i will cancel the BIS plan and see if i have any problems with email after that, but i dont think i will

[Omnitech]

I took the plunge and brought the phone to Greece, where it currently hasnt been released yet.

There was data when i swapped the sims over. It seems as though the BIS even when it has transferred does not allow data to be transferred, not emails or browsing.

All i did was added a data plan onto my contract and it all worked. The next thing i will experiment with, is that i will cancel the BIS plan and see if i have any problems with email after that, but i dont think i will

There's no need for a "BIS" plan any more with BB10/Z10/Q10.

[reinihello]

I have the same user profil as you. traveling a lot outside Austria and was a long time BB user because of the BIS plan worldwide.

what was your experience in march with the Z10? How was during traveling, does it works what about the roaming cost. I think this will be the differnce of the ol BIS plan.

[Richard Buckley]

Just curious, how many other non-enterprise users would be be willing to pay a monthly fee for BES like security features? Not that I have anything sensitive I am sending but I personally would pay a couple of extra bucks a month to know all my data (emails, BBM's etc) are being encrypted.

If your email provider uses SSL encryption, like Google does, you already have high quality encryption on your email connection from your BB10.

Posted via CB10

[bobauckland]

I have the same user profil as you. traveling a lot outside Austria and was a long time BB user because of the BIS plan worldwide.

what was your experience in march with the Z10? How was during traveling, does it works what about the roaming cost. I think this will be the differnce of the ol BIS plan.

If you travel and data costs are even remotely important to you, it's legacy BBOS all the way.
The Z10 guzzles data, and roaming with it will lead to a huge bill for most people.