This ‘thick’ always-on mobile client is a perfect leveraging of the BlackBerry always-on data connection. Only BlackBerry has this type of managed connection to the device.

The N810 is out just 11 months from the N800 debut at the Web2summit shindig.

iTunes Plus is under a buck,
Leopard is on the prowl and scraps to be fed to the 3rd party developers come Feb 2008 post-Macworld buzz.

The elephants are rumbling.

I’m going to go hug my Chumby.

RIM is already supporting this over WiFi i.e. if the BB handset supports WiFi then in a campus environment it can communicate directly with the BES for email and the Ascendent wireless PBX for VoIP as an extension. RIM are working on combining the BES and Ascendent platforms together but currently they are separate.

But extending this out to cellular is problematic for performance reasons. A possible half way step would be for the voice to still be forwarded from PBX to the BB mobile over cellular circuits but the BB device to send back signalling to the PBX (on call, off call etc.) via the always on data path.

It would not really be free but a flat rate just like the email service.

Just to clarify the VPN model a little further.

>>in other words all mobile devices are in a Blackberry VPN. The reason for this is that RIM are applying their own proprietary transport layer over the radio network - this is very important and secures the quality of the IP connection and is what makes the
Blackberry connection so reliable - radio environments are inherently unreliable for data transmission.

Yesss. That’s what I thought, but I haven’t seen it explained in detail anywhere before.

BlackBerry devices are actually addressed from the RIM relay by their unique PIN number so that the identity of each device is completely independent of the underlying mobile operator architecture and IP addressing. This means that in another country all you have to do is put in a local SIM card that has the BlackBerry service and your device will still receive all your email without a glitch - very useful.

And as more operators make the BlackBerry service available on prepay SIM cards it will make travelling even easier and cheaper.

Just a couple of notes…

>>in other words all mobile devices are in a Blackberry VPN. The reason for this is that RIM are applying their own proprietary transport layer over the radio network - this is very important and secures the quality of the IP connection and is what makes the
Blackberry connection so reliable - radio environments are inherently unreliable for data transmission.

Yesss. That’s what I thought, but I haven’t seen it explained in detail anywhere before.

This is also why, when RIM had an outage, the whole system went down.

By contrast, I believe in a Windows Mobile e-mail connection you connect directly to either the supplier’s POP server or your employer’s Exchange server. There’s no intermediary. Upside: An outage at Microsoft doesn’t cut off your email. Downside: Lower quality of service.

That is a huge difference.

>>So RIM are the only vendor that has a dedicated ‘always-on’ data pipe out to every active user. This should be very valuable for them to leverage off.

You can say that again.

>>For mobile operators Blackberry is a service that just works well and given its sophistication doesn’t require too much resource to sell or support.

Exactly! RIM takes charge of quality of service.

>>This is in stark contrast to Windows Mobile or Nokia in the business space.

Yup. If you have trouble connecting to your Exchange server, Microsoft’s likely to send you back to your IT manager for support. Not a comfortable situation for an operator who’s stuck in the middle. Users generally call on the operator first for support, so RIM’s more controlled architecture must feel very comforting to them.

>>In think they need to stick to their core maket and be careful not to lose sight of that when going after the consumer side.

I’m not clear if RIM thinks it’s pursuing the consumer side of the communication market, or if it’s trying to do entertainment phones. I am very skeptical of their ability to compete with Apple in the entertainment phone market. They’re not likely to have any more success in that than Apple has selling to IT managers.

What I am still wondering is how blackberry seems to be a key to free international data roaming. AT&T and a bunch of operators around the world offer unlimited data plans including international for blackberry users; as far as I know none of them offer anything similar for none blackberry devices.
I think they do this because of the high level of compression that Blackberry applies, in the order of 10:1 over the same emails sent to other mobile devices. Most Blackberry email users use less than 5MB per month for all email including attachments, and it is only web browsing or now emailing of photos (with Curve) that is pushing usage levels beyond this. I assume that these roaming deals still have data caps in the fine print.

The way that it was described is that if I install any apps that route data through any route other than blackberry I would be charged at the maximum allowed data rate for all transfers. On the other hand it does not matter if its email or anyohter type of data if it passes through BES/BIS its free.
This is probably because they will be providing you a bundle price for data that goes via the Blackberry VPN connection (i.e. this is how the billing system will be configured), but not for data that goes via standard internet or directly into Corporate network. They could, but they can be much more confident that the Blackberry data compression will keep usage levels manageable.

But Blackberry data usage is about to explode with photo sending (size of Curve JPEG images are up to 0.5MB and cannot be further compressed without losing image quality), GPS, richer web browsers supporting RSS (again Curve), and html email support (BES 5.0?). As I raised in my previous post RIM must be facing some very difficult questions of how to scale their model whereby all data continues to transit via their infrastructure.

And I agree with your last paragraph in that Blackberry have a very distinct market and a very robust solution. Taking Michaels model of the 3? basic types of mobile device then Blackberry should be well placed to extend into the consumer side of the messaging/communications device with somthing focused, reliable and a bit cool, but they must be careful not to leave the door open to other even more specialised business devices or go too far and alienate that market.

What I am still wondering is how blackberry seems to be a key to free international data roaming. AT&T and a bunch of operators around the world offer unlimited data plans including international for blackberry users; as far as I know none of them offer anything similar for none blackberry devices. If most are extremely expensive if used with none blackberry.

When I inquired at AT&T I was warned to be very carefull what I do with either a blackberry device or a palm operating on BES/BIS. The way that it was described is that if I install any apps that route data through any route other than blackberry I would be charged at the maximum allowed data rate for all transfers. On the other hand it does not matter if its email or anyohter type of data if it passes through BES/BIS its free.

I am really wondering what is so special about data transfer via BES/BIS that operators are not only willing to give unlimited access to home subscribers but ones visiting their networks as well? Perhaps operators would not be so willing to give unlimited 3G; explaining the lack of 3G blackberry phones?

On a seperate topic. I have this burning feeling that blackberry is going to be the IBM of the phone world. What I mean is the PC was a bussiness machine(blackberry.) The entertainment/household computer for the rest of us was a fight between apple, amiga, and atari(iphone and nokia.) In the end everyone used PC’s in the home grown out of the IBM platform. I believe that most people have an unspoken sense of confidence in devices/systems/platforms designed for the corporate/bussiness world that leads to them becoming the all around standard even though other device may seem a better fit for the application.