I live in So Cal (OC) CA. and will be traveling internationally from time to time. Can anyone make a recommendation for choosing a provider (TMO vs. Cingular)?

here we go again... tmobile is good around major city areas, when you get on the fringes it becomes kinda sketch. Personally I live in the SF bay area and have a tmo bb and it works great on their edge system. I don't know about so cal. If you plan on unlocking the BB and using it with someone else's sim internationall then it doesn't matter who you go with. Save yourself a couple bucks on the monthly service and go with tmo.

Wirelessly posted (8700c: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Who is paying the bill? Corp or personal?

Thanks for your patience apple85. It sounds like this is perhaps an age old question (or debate) on the forum? Unfortunately I do not have much experience with either of these carriers. I currently have phones with Verizon & sprint.

In response to Stinsonddog's Question: I work as a consultant and will be paying the bill personally. However, I am willing to pay the cingular premium if it equates to a higher quality and or more extensive service/coverage. Locally as well as nationally & internationally.

Also, I am currently thinking of signing up with one of the monthly BES providers for full integration. If I understand things correctly I'll have to shell out 2K if I want my own BES. Is this correct? Can someone recommend one over the other for this service? Is there any down side to going with the monthly service?

It's pretty much like selecting any wireless carrier: choose based on coverage at the locations that matter most to you. The rest is pretty much gravy.

That plus all associated costs with running and maintaining your own Exchange server.

Always, always, always choose based on coverage for the area you'll spend 75-80% of your time. A great phone won't do much for you if you can't communicate with it!