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:
Quote:
American online had something called "Bring Your Own Access" (BYOA) whereupon you used another ISP in order to access American Online. Other BYOA concepts are similiar, such as providing your own Internet infrastructure for your own telephone line (Voice over Internet - VoIP). This is no different, in technical terms. So technically (rather than politically/competitively) this is NOT considered cheating as you are still paying the carrier for the data connection. However, for political or competitive reasons, you may be right about cheating if that is the general stance of the carriers. (Can anyone else confirm this?)
Blackberry actually uses less bandwidth than a Treo 600 or a PocketPC phone, so any cheap unlimited plan loopholes would hurt the carriers less than if the person was using the other phones. It is definitely unclear to an outsider whether this is really cheating, since the carrier doesn't provide access to BWC and thus isn't paying the expense for BWC -- just an Internet connection that connects to a third party provider -- and RIM still gains by the sale of the BES/MDS licenses used for BES/MDS hosting. And you're still paid up for bandwidth.
Also, technically, RIM could theoretically allow Blackberry data connectivity to work over any Internet-enabled APN (simply tunnelling Blackberry functionality over a standard Internet connection). That would mean the server component would be moved upstream somewhat, and be just a generic IP address accessible in a data plan, rather than an APN, and thus you would just use any TCP/IP link to get to the Blackberry server. But of course, for profit-model and the viability of Blackberry reasons, it may not have been designed that way.
However, the carriers need to be involved -- and RIM needs to have a viable business model that the carriers like -- and carriers need to see a profit in offering the BlackBerry. So that argument is valid. This could nullify the ability to BYOA on a BlackBerry. For carrier politics / competitive reasons, they may consider it cheating -- I'd like to confirm from insiders if possible. Either way, I would like to hear more opinions from others (especially from someone who knows more about carriers). It's possible different carriers have a different opinion on this.
And we have to respect our wonderful company Research In Motion for their innovation on Blackberry, we just don't know their specific stand on the BYOA concept. RIM wins either way (sales of BES servers), but we've got to consider the carriers, and RIM being nice to carriers, and RIM successfully growing because of carriers providing Blackberry services.
That is why I posted an inquiry -- to get any kind of information about this. This is not for myself but for my FAQ. I am not switching from my Rogers Blackberry plan, but I would like to update my BES/MDS FAQ document if this turned out to, indeed, be a legitimate way to get Blackberry working on carriers that do not currently support the Blackberry (the main intention). It can provide the impetus, for example, for certain carriers to finally offer the BlackBerry if a few users were using BYOA on the Blackberry successfully even though they don't offer the Blackberry yet (i.e. Fido).
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Information about this would be greatly appreciated. It is a valid question: Is Blackberry "BYOA" considered
cheating from the carrier viewpoint?