[09DannyH]

Used the search function, but didn't find anything that directly answered my questions.

I'm going down to the United States from Canada for a week next week and wanted to know how much it would cost to use my Torch. I regularily go through 26-60MB per month, running 3 email accounts, twitter, web browsing, bbm and uploading to youtube.

1. How do I use BBM strictly over Wifi so that I'm not billed on my from my carrier.

2. If I was to just use BBM, how much would it cost? I send about a message every five minutes, usually not that long (up to 100 characters?) My carrier charges $3.00 per MB

3. How do I turn off my email, twitter, ect, things that my phone automatically recieves? (Is it called pushed data? Not sure....)


What would be my best method? I'm going to be there for 8 days and I need to stay in touch with my dad and girlfriend.

[anon1937793]

If all you care about is BBM and you want everything else disabled why not just turn off mobile network access and only leave Wifi connected?

You can edit individual program permissions through the application center, and cut off their data access.

I'm from Toronto and go to the US quite often. I use about 50 - 100 MB / month usually while in Canada. But you can easily chop it down to under 1 MB / day if you only do txt in bbm / e-mails. Pictures are killer on the data. Obviously doing something like streaming youtube is as well...

I also see that you're on Telus... For $10 you can add a 30 day US data pass to your account that will give you access to data for $1 / MB, for 30 days from when you added it.

[09DannyH]

Also, should I set my phone to 2G only or 3G and 2G?

[anon1937793]

2G vs 3G shouldn't make a difference. Your phone is still using the same amount of data, it just takes longer to get it

[09DannyH]

If all you care about is BBM and you want everything else disabled why not just turn off mobile network access and only leave Wifi connected?

You can edit individual program permissions through the application center, and cut off their data access.

I'm from Toronto and go to the US quite often. I use about 50 - 100 MB / month usually while in Canada. But you can easily chop it down to under 1 MB / day if you only do txt in bbm / e-mails. Pictures are killer on the data. Obviously doing something like streaming youtube is as well...

I also see that you're on Telus... For $10 you can add a 30 day US data pass to your account that will give you access to data for $1 / MB, for 30 days from when you added it.

How much would you say your average bill is with the $10.00 for $1.00 a MB. I'm thinking I'll be using around 10-15MB so I'm not sure whether to go on the safe side and get it or be cheap now and pay for it later with a huge bill.

[anon1937793]

I would add the $10 for $1 / MB data access. I usually use 1 MB / day or less while travelling. If you did the same, 8 days in the US should cost around $20 including the $10 fee... and if you do end up using more at least it's only costing you $1 / MB instead of $3!

[swishhh]

I have used bbm only on wifi while in the states. All I did was turn data services on but while roaming "off". You should be able to receive emails twitter updates facebook and bbm while on wifi. The only things that you can't do for free are call and text messages.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[_StephenBB81]

I often go to the US, and use the $10/MB plan

I use 600-700MB of data per month in Canada.
but while in the US I am able to maintain 1-2MB per day.

What you need to do,
Stop opening attachments on your Blackberry (Truncation is a great "feature" when traveling)
tell your BBM contacts you are in the US and to not send pictures or voicenotes.
Use Wifi when available

1MB is approximately 1000 BBM messages, as a safe rule.

[09DannyH]

I have used bbm only on wifi while in the states. All I did was turn data services on but while roaming "off". You should be able to receive emails twitter updates facebook and bbm while on wifi. The only things that you can't do for free are call and text messages.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Yes, I'm planning on using the only wifi option, was actually experimenting at home today on my berry to see if it actually just went through wifi, and it did. My only problem is my wifi will be limited to the hotels in Vegas, which charge around fifteen dollars a day for it, and my grandparents house, which I won't be spending a lot of time at in Arizona, so lots of driving in between too.

I often go to the US, and use the $10/MB plan

I use 600-700MB of data per month in Canada.
but while in the US I am able to maintain 1-2MB per day.

What you need to do,
Stop opening attachments on your Blackberry (Truncation is a great "feature" when traveling)
tell your BBM contacts you are in the US and to not send pictures or voicenotes.
Use Wifi when available

1MB is approximately 1000 BBM messages, as a safe rule.

Thanks for that little thing about how many BBMs in a MB. I was reading around that it was 100, then 10, then I read that every character was 1 byte. It got pretty confusing. Most my my messages are short and to the point anyway.

[Reed McLay]

The critial factor is granularity, the minimum block of data that will be billed with each message.

My carrier, Rogers, uses a 2 Kb granularity for data. That means any message I send, including "LOL" will be counted as 2 Kb.

500 x 2 Kb = 1 Mb message for $6 works out to 1.2 cents per message.

[_StephenBB81]

The critial factor is granularity, the minimum block of data that will be billed with each message.

My carrier, Rogers, uses a 2 Kb granularity for data. That means any message I send, including "LOL" will be counted as 2 Kb.

500 x 2 Kb = 1 Mb message for $6 works out to 1.2 cents per message.

I am not sure I agree with you here.

Rogers states

With 1 MB you can send/receive 514 emails (text only) from a BlackBerry� Bold� or send/receive 341 instant messages from a regular phone

1 - The monthly service fee is not pro-rated. The minimum chargeable amount in the U.S. is $0.01. Minimum usage is rounded up to 6 kB in order to have the minimum charge of $0.01 appear on the invoice. Further rounding is to the next higher multiple of 1 kB.

It pays to check the fine print with Telus who you are with,

http://www.rogers.com/web/content/ad...lwithyourphone

and through my experience, with BBM usage I was achieving approximately 900-1200 per day @ 1MB per day usage whilst in the US.

[_StephenBB81]

Thanks for that little thing about how many BBMs in a MB. I was reading around that it was 100, then 10, then I read that every character was 1 byte. It got pretty confusing. Most my my messages are short and to the point anyway.

It is very confusing
Technically every Character is 1 Byte,
But a Message contains more than just the Character sent, as it contains routing information, in each message, but then you apply compression, and because the size of a single byte and compression you're 500 char message doesn't have to be 500 bytes, but instead is compressed to 250 using a simple compression of assigning letters and numbers a nibble values instead of byte value, which is like intro to compression kind of ideas.

you should make the assumption every message you send/receive is a single unit of measure that your carrier bills, in my case I am billed at 1KB, and the Carrier says that 1MB is 1000KB's because they want to rip me off haha