Hi,

I just upgraded from a Pearl 8120 to a Bold 9780 with T-mo USA.

With my Pearl 8120, I was able to roam internationally using the "BlackBerry Unlimited International E-mail" plan at a flat rate, for the few times a year I'm out of the country. A lot of people claim that this plan is for e-mail and not other data use. Customer reps usually but not always agree but their inconsistency makes them a bad source of information. Anyway, I've been getting unlimited E-mail *AND* all data, actually -- I've used this plan for nearly 3 years several times in multiple continents and never gotten charged a cent for web browsing abroad. Mind you, I didn't abuse it -- mostly Google Maps, instant messaging, Wikipedia and other casual informational use. As of March 2010 I travelled abroad and got free data.

My Pearl 8120 had the APN field left blank.

My new 9780 has 'epc.tmobile.com' as the APN. I tried clearing the APN and surprisingly everything continued to work fine.

Questions:
1. Is this epc.tmobile.com just a new ploy to differentiate e-mail vs. other traffic so they can charge for international data? Or is there any other advantage for me to use epc.tmobile.com?

2. If I leave the APN blank does that mean T-mobile cannot differentiate my data?