I recently acquired a blackberry 7290. I spend some time searching for an answer to this everywhere, but found nothing.

Is there a way to connect a blackberry to a home or office network so that it can share an internet connection? - (like a laptop with a wireless card would)

So that any time I am near my wireless router my blackberry would connect to the net through my home or office network. I know that a blackberry can function as a modem to a laptop, so technically this should be possible..., (do i need BES for this?)

thanks:

Short answer is no. BB does not have WiFi, although it is rumored to be coming in the future with the 8820.

For email and Internet, you must have a BB dataplan.

A BB can function as a modem, but you must have a tethering plan to do that, or you be hit with a surprise when you get your bill. Tethering is over and above the cost of a dataplan.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8800/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

You're confusing two points. The Blackberry's ability to work as a modem has nothing to do with its ability to connect to a WiFi network. Just like your laptop's modem doesn't connect to a WiFi hotspot -- they're totally different technologies...