Check out the T-Mobile Forum under Carrier Discussion. There are several threads discussing this situation. Generally, for 3rd party BB's you can get away without a BB plan. However, if you got your BB from TMO, you must have a data plan.
Having said that, I don't know if the old $10 plan works for BB. If you are a new customer, I don't think that plan is available (at least not on-line).
If you already have a dumb phone with the $10 data, If you just take the sim to your blackberry you'll be able to use 3rd party programs like bolt or opera, google maps, but will not be able to use any BB software (BB Browser, messenger, aim, yahoo, msn, maps). E-mail won't come through either without the BB data plan.
Yes, that is right. I have an existing data plan with a dumb phone, and was hoping to use that with my 8310.
I see. So, there's no way to configure it to work with a standard dumb phone data plan?
No. And the reason is this. Those features rely on the device PIN, via RIMs servers using t-mobile as a gateway. If t-mobile doesn't allocate data to your phone via RIM, many things won't function. Using 3rd party web browsers (bolt, opera), and programs like google maps, works because they use your providers internet, not RIMs. BB Browser, AIM, Yahoo, Maps, all use RIMs connection through your provider and won't authenticate, and in cases like the BB Broswer, won't even show up unless the proper service book is present (sent when you register to the network)
