Will be traveling to Russia again soon & wondered if I should purchase a Blackberry. I brought my laptop last trip, which was a pain. I didn't realize my hotel in Vladivostok does not have wireless access & the per minute charge for a local call was outrageous. Since I got back to the US, I thought about buying a calling card & dial into a long distance internet provider.

So.....would a blackberry work in this scenerio?

T-Mobile has roaming agreements in Russia - http://www.t-mobile.com/internationa...geInternet.asp - note that voice is $4.99/minute (yikes). So a 7290 on their network would work.

Cingular has roaming also (voice is only $3.99/minute) - http://www.cingular.com/customer_service/roaming_gen - but I can never find their GPRS roaming agreements.

Best bet is to call these two and double check. Verizon, Sprint and Nextel will not work there at all. Good luck!