[Edit by Mark Rejhon: Please note, this post was based on outdated information. Some of the information in this post is not possible on most carriers.]

Doing research.

I have discovered few number of people are doing a "Bring Your Own Access" technique to get Blackberry email on prepaid SIM cards and other cellphone plans. This appears to be possible on other carriers.

1. Your SIM does not need to be Blackberry provisioned.
2. Your SIM card MUST have a GPRS data plan (preferably unlimited)
3. You must buy a 3rd party BES/MDS hosting service (starts at $10 per month)
4. You will get NO BWC.
5. Your push email will come from an Exchange mailbox instead rather than BWC.
6. You do, get access to Internet apps such as WebMessenger.

This is a technique that makes Blackberry email on Fido possible, as well as on other cellphone networks not equipped for Blackberry; as long as they have full GPRS data capability.

I need to hear from more other people who are using Blackberry in this particular manner.

Ok....let me make sure I get this right (because if I'm understanding you correctly, this is amazing!).

If I get my BB unlocked from Rogers and then slide in my Fido SIM card (with no changes to the card), I could get the same instant email (push) functionality as I'm currently getting? My current setup is I have an Exchange server that is set to automatically forward my email to my BWC. If I sign up for Mailstreet, how would it work - I would forward my Exchange to a mailstreet email address and it would then push it to my device? If I don't have a BWC account, how are they sending the email?

Is there anybody out there is currently doing this that can attest to how well the system works?

That's why I posted this message -- since this technique appears to work in certain cases (i.e. one user here uses a plain AT&T phone plan without a Blackberry plan. They get no access to AT&T BWC but has no problems with BES/MDS).

I am trying to collect information on users doing this "Bring Your Own Access" technique so that a FAQ can be made, or that my BES/MDS Hosting FAQ can be extended to include this information.

Good Research Mark

We should create some sort of registry for this.

Gothalyptic's post about him using a non-Blackberry plan and it successfully with BES/MDS was the impetus of me starting research on this, and this is why I post this message to solicit more users who are using "Bring Your Own Access" technique with the Blackberry, because, apparently, it does work in certian cases. I am trying to research under which cases this works.

Perhaps it only works with existing carriers that already enables the Blackberry APN even on their non-Blackberry plans. Fido is supposedly a special case since they did enable the Blackberry APN but never commercialized it.

Also, with international roaming, sometimes I am able to roam my Blackberry onto cellphone companies that doesn't even offer Blackberry, yet my Blackberry email works. What happens in these cases? Maybe they added access to the APN because of their roaming relationships?

It does need to be tested out: Which carriers allows generic access to Blackberry's own network? Does the configurable APN in the TCP/IP setup in Options on BlackberryOS 4.0 allow bypassing the need to use a Blackberry-specific APN?

Questions that need to be answered in the course of testing and experimenting, and existing users' experiences.

Mark, you are an extremely valuable resource!

Does anyone know if any of the 3rd party BES providers offer a 'free trial' of their service?

Another interesting idea that popped up is -- carrier politics. The question is, do they consider it cheating. On RIMROAD, I got mentioned that this could be cheating. To this, I responded:Information about this would be greatly appreciated. It is a valid question: Is Blackberry "BYOA" considered cheating from the carrier viewpoint?

Further information that I have received from Aquiname on RIMROAD indicates a potential trespassing issue with the BYOA concept -- because you still have to go through a carrier-side Blackberry gateway even before you reach a BWC server or a BES server. This is the usual hierarchy for the push email.If you decided to try to bypass the BWC server by BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) with a third party BES service, you still end up with:As a result, it seems like one would now be trespassing a carrier-side Blackberry gateway when one attempted BYOA (Bring Your Own Access). It also indicates Blackberry functionality is likely not possible on networks that don't have a Blackberry-specific gateway, although technically RIM could make Blackberry work (albiet less reliably) over non-Blackberry gateways due to problems with varying IP addresses and the connectionless protocol that Blackberry uses for push email.

Another question is why Blackberry sometimes work on some cell networks that don't even support Blackberry. This is probably because of special cases where the network has set up a Blackberry gateway, but not deployed Blackberries. It would seem that this would probably be considered 'trespassing' by the carrier themselves, even when connecting to a third-party BES server.

It would be really nice to hear an official word from RIM themselves to clarify.

Newer technologies such as iDEN network (Nextel) which allow static IP addresses and some 3G systems support incoming addressability (i.e. static IP addresses, etc) that makes push email much easier without requiring a Blackberry specific gateway. So it is possible that BYOA won't be a can of worms, for those people who choose to BYOA, and carriers/RIM is far more likely to not mind because of the clear BYOA distinction since both would still profit either way.

Are there any 3rd party BES providers that integrate with your own Exchange account?

This topic isn't finished.

There's a good roaring bonfire in these RIMROAD threads:
BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) -- Blackberry on cellphone networks without Blackberry, Page 2
BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) -- Blackberry on cellphone networks without Blackberry, Page 3

I will copy any possibly interesting information into this thread. I am tempted to invite these forum members over here to continue the interesting debate about this subject, but we don't want to scare new users away with a damburst of technical information, when BlackberryClub is already starting to be a firehose of information flow!

Mark, I currently have a Sony T-610 which I use as a GPRS Bluetooth modem for my IPAQ 1945 and Toshiba Laptop with D-Link Bluetooth adapter. I am considering upgrading to the Blackberry 7100t or the 7230 with T-Mobile in Atlanta. I currently have the ability to forward my emails because I use Fastmail.fm to collect all my emails. I use their wonderful webmail interface, and can even use it quite well on the PPC. I just really miss my keyboard like I use to have on my old Treo 90. They have a forwarding service in their "rules" options to send the complete message, summary, etc. Right now I send a summary email, as a text message to my tmomail.net address on my phone. This let's me know within seconds if I have an email. I receive faxes online and am notified the same way. I am concerned however, about losing the full "HTML" web experience I now have by switching to Blackberry. I believe there are at least 2 options for me to consider. 1) Use the Blackberry Web Client to manage my emails, (My company will not be running BES anytime soon) and hope the full internet portal is open to surf the web with the ReqWireless WebViewer. 2) Keep my GPRS Internet with T-Mobile and forward my emails to an address on the phone. This will enable "Full" intenet, but I'm not sure if the Blackberry will be able to configure the email client correctly. I would like to keep the T-610 to use as a modem for my laptop this way. Thanks for posting this thread. I hope you can enable more users of the ubiquitous Blackberry.

As one post stated... this will probably only work with Fido as they are the test network for all the RIM employees. This is probably one of the only carriers that has a connection to the RIM NOC and doesn't offer blackberry service to it's customers. I think i'll try this shortly to see if it works.

Cheers,
Andrew

has anyone gotten a unlocked gsm blackberry to work on fido for sure with a prepaid sim?

Have you gotten this to work? What about getting fido to provision your sim's profile with the blackberry.net APN?

Anyone know if there is a prepaid sim in the US that includes data?

Has anyone heard new info on this topic?

I have an unlocked AT&T 7290 and a fido sim with GPRS data pack.
I have tried many APN settings and have had no luck to get my fido account to connect with my BES provider.

Unfortunately, this has not worked (Fido needs to put "blackberry.net" APN on your account, but they won't add it), so you will need to get a BlackBerry plan.

Ok, makes sense.
I'll have to try to convince fido to do that or wait till Fido and Rogers are fully merged and then get a blackberry plan as Fido is not offering blackberrys yet.

If I'm reading your concern here right, I'm not sure how they would consider it trespassing as the company you are getting your BES/MDS access through has paid for a CAL license. Apologies if I read this incorrectly.

I have an unlocked Blackberry 8100 pearl, I can use my fido sim card in it for voice calls. I cant access any data with my phone. Does anyone know how i can configure my phone to access the internet, not for blackberry services but just to access the internet? Fido gave me various configurations including apn settings and dns numbers, I dont know how i can manually configure these settings on my blackberry. Can anyone help?

The firm I work at has its own BES. If I can get my phone to access data, then maybe it will work with the BES? Anyways the first step is to access data.

Actually that was a long time ago as Fido was originally Canada's first GSM provider and RIM used Fido's network to test GSM BlackBerries. Any GSM BlackBerry testing RIM would do has been done on the Rogers Wireless network for many years now. (Info I received from both of my corportate Rogers Reps when I inquired about this)

From what I hear they won't be offering them either. There was some talk in the beginning of the year of Fido to carry BlackBerries mid to late 2006 but that was scrapped. (Info I received from both of my corportate Rogers Reps when I inquired about this)

Hello, I am in a similar dilemma, has anyone gotten this to work?
It's either that or migrate to Rogers,
I know fido is offering Blackberry email service for a Nokia E62 but the online registration doesn't seem to be working. Is this something I could take advantage of? Thanks!!!