Hi,

I'm considering a Blackberry....

My company has BES, and uses Verizon as it's exclusive carrier. I'm partial to Sprint.

I don't know anything about BES other than it will push/sync my email. Will my companies BES work with any Blackberry (i.e a Sprint version of the 7250), or do you think it will have to be a Verizon phone?

Can anyone explain how the phone connects (for lack of a better description) to BES?

Thanks,

TMR

BES is carrier independant. BES has NOTHING to do with the specific carriers. Here's the basic link:

BB (Phone) talk to carrier (Sprint/Verizon/whatever). Carrier has links to RIM. RIM has a link to the specific BES through a secure link. BES talks to your e-mail server (Exchange, Domino, Groupwise), which talk to your e-mail client (Outlook, for example).

Does that help?

The link from BES is to RIM, not to the carrier.

Does this help?

Yes, I believe that helps....

So, my company's BES points back to RIM just as they would with any BB (no difference for what the company must do be it verizon or sprint) , and RIM sorts it out from there (maybe based on the phone number or phone ID)?

Is that correct?

Thanks,

TMR

You got it. Every BlackBerry has a specific PIN associated with it. BBs beginning with "2" are GSM/GPRS. 3 are CDMA. 4 are iDen. When the BB "registers" (via the radio), RIM knows what network it is on. So when traffic comes in for a specific BB, RIM handles the forwarding. So if I am in Kuala Lumpur, and my BB registers on Maxis Mobile, RIM passes the traffic to their network.

Obviously the international scenario doesn't work the same for CDMA devices.

Can my BES synchronize my Exchange with two GSM card from two different network.

The issue is this. My company have about 20 exteremely mobile staff operating on two different country. (Singapore & Indonesia) and they are all addicted to their blackberries. In order to deal with the roaming charges, I plan to equip each of them with two GSM SIM (from SingTel (Singapore) and Matrix (Indonesia)) but I want to configure it to both synchronize to the same Exchange account. So they can just plug in the card appropriate for the country they are in. Will this work?

Do I need 2 BES user license per person then?

Remember that BOTH SIM cards are going to need BlackBerry Data Plans on them. This is going to get expensive either way. It should work, since the BES is tied to the PIN of the BlackBerry. But I think it would be cheaper to use only the data portion when roaming and give them cheap local voice only SIM cards to use in phones when traveling... More complicated for the staff, but possibly cheaper in the end.