BIG BlackBerry issues in the UK?

[McScriven]

Is anyone else experiencing problems with receiving mail in the UK on their BlackBerry's?

I got a message at 2am today saying my account had become invalidated for our company email.

We are with O2, so I logged onto their site and clicked to revalidate and it did. However, five minutes later I get another message saying it has stopped working.

The same has happened to the other 9 people in the company.

We run Microsoft Exchange 2003, with Outlook Web Access, with the Blackberry Internet Service on the phone.

Things have been working fine for the last two weeks (since we migrated onto Exchange from a previous POP set-up). However, today the problems have started.

I phoned O2 who's first line support intially told me that BIS doesn't support exchange mail retrieval. However, I think this is probably rubbish as it had been working. Using the mail redirector tool isn't an option as we have some users who are laptop staff and others who just use their BlackBerry for email and don't have PC's.

O2 suggested we switched on the pop function to our exchange accounts and use these settings for our BlackBerry's to receive the mail. However, despite staying validated no email is coming into the phones.

I have heard through some other friends in the IT industry that they have been having the same problems with other network carriers in the UK - Tmobile and Vodafone.

O2 have refered this to RIM to look into, but does anyone else have any news on similiar experiences with Outlook Web Access not working with BIS, and also any current issues with receiving mail on their BlackBerry's in the UK.

[thetonyclifton]

I just use BIS and not outlook but my mail has been coming through fine on vodafone UK

[tobyw]

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.8462/20; U; en))

No problems currently with my set-up with T Mobile UK with 2 OWA BIS accounts. However, very occasionally I get the disconnected message. The last time I got this was when we had a power outage during the night, thus RIM's BIS NOC couldn't contact our server.

OWA is supported on BIS, and is probably preferable to POP3 for you. However, I would be tempted to run my own BES server in your shoes - the hardware and licenses would not be outragously expensive and you would get instant mail, full reconcile and calendar/tasks etc OTA sync.

[McScriven]

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.8462/20; U; en))

OWA is supported on BIS, and is probably preferable to POP3 for you. However, I would be tempted to run my own BES server in your shoes - the hardware and licenses would not be outragously expensive and you would get instant mail, full reconcile and calendar/tasks etc OTA sync.

That is where we are planning on heading but I just need this resolved in the meantime.

Would have to be when the CEO is out of the country as well and isn't receiving his email!

[byron_hinson]

No problems here with O2, set up mine yesterday and it has been working fine.

[finister]

T Mobile did have a problem with odd users on BIS that took around a month to resolve with RIM, but that was fixed approx 1 1/2 weeks ago....

[david_uk]

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.8462/20; U; en))

OWA is supported on BIS, and is probably preferable to POP3 for you. However, I would be tempted to run my own BES server in your shoes - the hardware and licenses would not be outragously expensive and you would get instant mail, full reconcile and calendar/tasks etc OTA sync.

BES via Hosted Exchange might be worth considering for 9 users.

No mail delivery problems on Voda UK BTW.

[McScriven]

Update: I may have been hasty blaming O2. I let a fellow techy friend add one of our addresses to his Tmobile set-up and it had the same problem.

However, when I add one of his exchange accounts to my phone it stays there perfectly.

This has lead me to one of two things:

1. There is a problem with our exchange
2. BT have just upgraded the ADSL speed on our line

With regards to exchange Outlook Web Access works perfectly and doesn't show any signs of not working. Likewise with the Exchange logs, these appear faultless.

The BT line (which servers the whole company) was upgraded from a 2MB line to a 8MB line recently. BT assure me that they have no conection issues at all. However, I reckon it might be that the line is dropping ever so slightly every now and then and this is causing BlackBerry to kick out the account validation.

Getting the accounts to validate in the first place isnt a problem, getting them to hold their validation is. Has anyone else experienced this, and if so how did they resolve it?

[blackberry_dev]

I have heard of this in the past we had a customer with a simualer issue and it was due to adsl line

in the end us and the customer sopke with rim bis supprt and resolved this

[McScriven]

I have heard of this in the past we had a customer with a simualer issue and it was due to adsl line

in the end us and the customer sopke with rim bis supprt and resolved this

Refered it back to O2 who are in turn taking it up with RIM.

However, the strangest thing is throughout this whole problem one of our users accounts have stayed up and working!!!

[McScriven]

Well we have finally fixed our problem.

Not quiet sure what it was but the fact that it started working yesterday when the ADSL line upgrade had finished. We're pretty sure it was that which kicked it out.

Although our users on their PC's didn't notice anything out of the ordinary the line was obviously doing enough to prevent BIS holding our connection to our Exchange server.