[JRSCCivic98]

Who thinks RIM should standardize on Service Books? The idea here is that right now in order to get a BB working with a carrier, a compatible function service books must be provisioned by that carrier to your handset or the BB handset will not work. Currently T-Mobile customers with Storms are experiencing these issues most likely because RIM's upgraded the service books revisions on the carrier for an upcoming handset release or OS availability change. That being said, there's a much better way that RIM should employ to fix these kinds of issues.

They need to take the basic functions of the handset (email, browser, etc.) and make standardized handsets for ALL BBs on ALL carriers regardless of if that carrier sells a perticular model or not. That way, people can be free to use a BB of their choice on a carrier of their choice... but of course, this is probably what RIM doesn't want to do because of their Nazi like control business model. Perhaps if they want people to continue to openly use their devices around the end users' needs, they should pay closer attention to what the customer actually wants.

[pkcable]

Amen sister! Anything else?

[JRSCCivic98]

Not at the moment, thanks for the edit thought...

[John Yester]

I know for a fact Verizon would fight this. Since they have been paired with Bing. Their browser service book push only gives users on newer devices only one search option... Bing

But I agree with the idea and not sure why it's never been done before. Maybe to many hands in the setup and what each company wants and needs?

As far as I know no other provider has changed this and gave all user the option on what to use for a search engine.

[JohnMidnight]

Sounds mighty fine.

[jeff.parent]

The idea is definitely a good one. However, I do see this as a problem when it comes to carrier specific service book choices. For example we can use the Verizon's Browser Search Option that yester brought up...

If all carriers were required to provide a basic set of Service Books (Browser, Email, etc) then separate service books would need to be added for situations like this where a carrier has an agreement with a "service" provider like MS an Bing. So that requires more service books. Secondly, since Verizon has this deal what would be the the controlling Service Book: Browser or Bing Search? If the user were to remove the "Bing" SB would that disable the Browser as Verizon has made a deal with MS (I'm sure for some amount of $$$) to have their search option be the only one in the browser.

That being said, if "Bing" was the controlling SB, how would each carrier define when the Browser is available. Verizon requires just the Bing SB, but ATT requires Google and a SB that forces your home page to be Wikipedia (idk, something crazy). Now we are seeing that something "carrier specific" needs to be defined before the Browser is enabled.


Now don't get me wrong, I think standardization would be nice. I just seem some additional issues.

[Radius]

I know for a fact Verizon would fight this. Since they have been paired with Bing. Their browser service book push only gives users on newer devices only one search option... Bing

But I agree with the idea and not sure why it's never been done before. Maybe to many hands in the setup and what each company wants and needs?

As far as I know no other provider has changed this and gave all user the option on what to use for a search engine.

Why would they lock you into Google like that?

[andyahs]

I like the Nazi control RIM has on me.

[JRSCCivic98]

I don't think some of you grasp the idea here. The search default thing is besides the point. What we're talking about here is basic BB functions. You know, the ones that aren't tailored for each specific carrier. Also, the carriers have the necessary provisioning tools to either dole out a service book or not (such as the case behind VPLs). T-Mobile for instance has the ability to allow the customer to not have VPL service books pushed to their phones for silly apps if they don't want them. All you do is call CS and ask and they take them off your BIS account provisioning. Only the other carriers seem to play dumb dumb when it comes to doing this.

The idea here is to allow users to be able to activate a BB of their choice on a carrier that they might have and not have to worry about doing manual service books restores into the phone just to make things work. This isn't a hard concept for RIM to implement, they just choose not to do it due to some silly contractual reason if I had to guess on more carrier BS of some of them not wanting users that aren't on their network to use a certain handset no matter what. Heck, it might even be for the simple reason of that they just didn't think about it. Similar to the idea of giving BIS users the ability to remote wipe their handhelds if lost. Up until recently, RIM never thought of making that possible for non-BES users. It wasn't until we started mentioning it that all of a sudden it shows up on the list of capabilities slated for the next BIS update in the pipe.

[jeff.parent]

I don't think some of you grasp the idea here. The search default thing is besides the point. What we're talking about here is basic BB functions. You know, the ones that aren't tailored for each specific carrier. Also, the carriers have the necessary provisioning tools to either dole out a service book or not (such as the case behind VPLs). T-Mobile for instance has the ability to allow the customer to not have VPL service books pushed to their phones for silly apps if they don't want them. All you do is call CS and ask and they take them off your BIS account provisioning. Only the other carriers seem to play dumb dumb when it comes to doing this.

The idea here is to allow users to be able to activate a BB of their choice on a carrier that they might have and not have to worry about doing manual service books restores into the phone just to make things work. This isn't a hard concept for RIM to implement, they just choose not to do it due to some silly contractual reason if I had to guess on more carrier BS of some of them not wanting users that aren't on their network to use a certain handset no matter what. Heck, it might even be for the simple reason of that they just didn't think about it. Similar to the idea of giving BIS users the ability to remote wipe their handhelds if lost. Up until recently, RIM never thought of making that possible for non-BES users. It wasn't until we started mentioning it that all of a sudden it shows up on the list of capabilities slated for the next BIS update in the pipe.

What I was trying to get at before was that basic functions, though basic, may still be controlled by higher level functions/contractual obligations. You would essentially have to say:

1) Basic Function A depends on Carrier Specific Function B
2) Carrier Specific Function B can contain from 0 to n requirements.

Then all Carriers would have to have their Carrier Specific Service Book regardless of any type of "we force ____ on you". The Carriers are going to want to force a specific portion of a function on the user or not allow them to use any of the function. Yes a standard "Browser Enable" service book would be great, however it wont fly with out having some control.

So I guess what I'm saying is, Yes I want standard, default, vanilla service books. However I see why they don't exist.

[Mister Xiado]

It would be more sensible to allow the refusal of carrier service books.