I wanted to upgrade to an 8700c online but the 8700c wasn't listed. I emailed customer service and received the following response:

This device has been phased out of our product line and is no longer available through Cingular Wireless online sales. Although the 8700c is no longer available online, Cingular online has many other phones from which you may choose if you would like to complete your upgrade at this time. All of our phones have been through over 400 hours of testing to ensure the best quality in equipment for our customers. We have the largest selection of multimedia-capable handsets and a wide variety of camera and video phones. For the latest selection of available phones, visit www.cingular.com.

If you would like to purchase a Blackberry 8700c, you have two options:

1. You may visit one of your local Cingular Wireless stores, where a sales representative can demonstrate a variety of phones and features, plus give you the current pricing. The link to our Store Locator is http://www.cingular.com/buy/store_locator.



2. You may call our Customer Service department at 1-800-331-0500,
and we can send the phone to you through the mail.

Whaaaat!

Is this phone done? I am confused....

I just got mine like 2 weeks ago... should i retun it and wait for whatever BB is next for cingular?

Is there any speculation on what is next?

Probably the UMTS 8700 we've been hearing about.

I love my 8700c though. Nice. I'm rockin' a classic.

I noticed this too. Its kind of weird, if you go to cingular.com home page, you can still see the add for the 8700 in the middle of the page, and then you can click "buy it now." They do have a refurb 8700 on the phones page (if you go to the top and select "Blackberry") for $150 (no thanks).

I suspect it is purely a supply/demand issue and the supply chain has not ramped up fast enough to handle demand.

The 8700c is still listed on my Premeir site but, it is missing from the consumer site in my zip code.

I'm not sure what the UMTS 8700 is that's referred to above, but perhaps we're looking at an 8707 or similar in the future...

I've only had my 8700c for a couple weeks, and don't see myself upgrading again anytime soon. If the primary difference on the 8707 is 3G, while very cool, it wouldn't be worth the money to me yet.

Off of the Cingular site in the Detroit area as well. Most likely due to the UMTS version coming out

There was a thread on this issue already, but it was closed because there wasn't any information about why it was removed. Thanks for the update!

It is purely a supply and demand issue. Cingular regularly removes back ordered phones from their website. Point your browser here and you can order online:

http://onlinestorez.cingular.com/cel...equestid=26461

Don't expect to see the 8707 anytime soon, if ever.

I just looked on Cingulars site here in Pittsburgh and the 8700c is still listed both as new and refurb.

Yeap, same here in Fort Walton Beach FL

Just to squash the rumors of a UMTS 8700 for Cingular, it won't be happening anytime soon. Cingular barely even has UMTS rolled out to less than 2 dozen major markets. RIM's only current UMTS 8700 (the 8707v), as reported here, runs on the UMTS 2100mhz network, whereas Cingular has UMTS on the 1900mhz network (the 2100mhz band is being auctioned off in 2 months by the FCC). Cingular's next BlackBerry is the 7130g/7130c, which is the SureType EDGE-enabled slim-line device.

I see the 8700c still on Cingular's site.

OK all I already had a discussin with Cingular about this and marketing came back sayin that the reason we don't see it on the first page of their online store is because they do not want to put that many devices on one page. If you want to see all teh Blackberrys then you would need to view by device manufacturer. To do that there is a view dropdown menue on top click on the arrow and choose Blackberry then you will see all of them in there. It is not out of stock and still selling as usual with a new contract price of $260 after instant online rebate and a mail in rebate. They are now thinking about bringing it back to the main page. Hope that helps.

Just order my 8700C (new) yesterday and Fed EX tracking has it on my door Friday.

There will be a new BB coming out prolly in the summer...it's a slimmer version of the 7100 with EDGE technology....

that would be the 7130