Virgin Mobile USA Using BES On Their Network?!

Hello everyone,

I signed up with Virgin Mobile USA some months ago and opted for their BlS service with the purchase of a Blackberry 8530.

Anyways, according to RIM's security overview of BIS, they state,"The BlackBerry Internet Service uses the security of the wireless network that it connects to. Email messages that are sent between the BlackBerry Internet Service and the BlackBerry device are not encrypted. However, email messages that are sent between the BlackBerry Internet Service and the messaging server can be encrypted using SSL encryption."

In other words, if your email server supports encryption, BIS will establish a secure SSL connection and automatically encrypt emails it sends and receives. However, email that is sent/received between the BIS and your phone uses whatever security protocols your wireless service provider enacts.

I called Virgin Mobile USA to verify what security protocols they used for their network, and according to the representative I was talking to, VM uses the Blackberry Enterprise Server! I found this surprising, especially since the Blackberry Enterprise Server on my phone states that it is not active. However, he stated that the reason for this was that I was connected with VMUSA, not a corporate/business. (There could be some validity to this, especially since every time I restart my phone, it usually shows "enterprise configuration")

On other hand, I am still not clear about this and would like to get input from others. Has anyone else talked with VMUSA? I would like to get to the bottom of this! :)

They don't use BES. They use BIS.

If they use BES, it's not for you. It's for them and their internal/employee exchange accounts.

BES syncs Exchange data, not Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo/AOL/whatever...

Either you misunerstood him, he misunderstood you, or he just told you what you wanted to hear to get you off of the phone...

Thanks for the clarification, I had a suspicion that the representative was wrong, especially with some of the comparisons between BlS and BES on RIM's website.

On the other hand, do you know what security protocols VMUSA uses? As an addition, what security protocols do most wireless providers use and implement in general?