[yetdy]

Went to Dongguan City, Guangzhou to attend the China Print Exhibition. Guess what? 3 out of 4 of my Gmail accounts didn't work. Viber didn't work until the 3rd day. Only whatsapp worked but somewhat lagged or delayed.

As with getting business cards, I don't know why, I couldn't save any contacts whether I a new ones or edit old ones.

I could play COC or township though...

Luckily, I brought my ipad along. I was able to at least send and received all those that my BlackBerry passport couldn't.

Now that i'm back home, everything's fine.

Anyone experienced this before?

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[the_real_mikeyb]

This is not a blackberry issue but a Chinese one. Most Google services are blocked by the Chinese authorities. Your blackberry is probably setup to sync to your Gmail account. As it cannot sync to it you couldn't access these services. Possible that the great Wall of China also blocks BlackBerry servers.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...41229?irpc=932




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[the_real_mikeyb]

Sometimes they unblock certain services in china too for example at important trade exhibitions or when foreign heads of state are in town:

http://www.ibtimes.com/google-tempor...-visit-1624566

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...30924?irpc=932

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[kfehling]

My wife was in Shanghai last week and her corporate email is Gmail based. She had no access via Passport or her laptop until she set up a VPN tunnel. All of the other Passport features and apps worked including BBM, texts, her hotmail account, and Skype.

Agreed with the other posts that the government blocks Gmail.

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[thymaster]

Oh China is in a big dispute with Google right now it's not even funny.

[xueyaotianxia]

Yes you have to use VPN to connect anything related to Google...things such as facebook youtube twitter etc are all blocked by the government...Internet freedom is almost 0%...

Mia san mia!

[Andy Kuo]

Welcome to China. And yes, the only way to get around it is via VPN. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter...what not, all blocked.

MBFan-WHITE PASSPORT

[BlackberryCodeSource]

yup, they block google access and other things too

[gzkite]

You know what, my company IT told me, we will setup Von for your while you travel in China, but.... Only to sync email, NO Facebook etc... Although we using gmail production.

[thymaster]

Op maybe you should switch POP3 email providers instead of relying too much on Google. Choose one that's not high on the political radar.

[Taigatrommel]

Op maybe you should switch POP3 email providers instead of relying too much on Google. Choose one that's not high on the political radar.

There are enough "smaller" mail providers which offer the full stuff: IMAP, Push, maybe even CalDAV and CardDAV for calendar and contact syncs. Often you have to pay a small fee for them, but at least you pay with your money and not all your personal data. Usually those services are also not on any political radar, so they aren't blocked anywhere around the world.

I just recently switched all important stuff over from Outlook.com to a new provider and use the former just for some unimportant stuff. Doesn't work worse than Outlook on that small provider, mails come in just as fast, calendar sync doesn't lag anymore and the PIM usage is a tad lower compared to the full outlook suite.

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