I have been trying to follow this whole legal thing to figure out how it will impact me. The best I can tell, the worst that can happen is that I will lose my nextel.blackberry.net email address and my blackberry internet browser. Is that true?

Worst case your BlackBerry turns in to a smart phone, no email. The phone and web browser should be able to still work as the patent issues involve the push email. If you listen to a lot of people on this forum, the realistic outcome is almost nothing to the end consumer. RIM will most likely have to shell out a truck load of money to NTP. Who do you think is going to pay for that in the end? We will probably pay an additional premium for both the device and the monthly service.

Doug


Disclaimer: This was just my opinion, I could be completely off-base.

Never thought of it that way Doug...great point!

Thats what i thought. In other words, it will mean very little to me even if the worst does happen. i will lose the email address i do not use now for fear of irritating spam email. and i normally use the nol browser anyway as opposed to the blackberry browser because of the speed and simplicity of it.(i wonder if the blackberry browser is bundled with the push email? if so, i would assume that losing the push email will result in losing the blackberry browser.) all i would miss is the messaging. but i am sure nextel will activate the messaging on blackberry devices as it works on the motorolas. just like normal phones.
so either way it goes, it's really not as bad as most people tend to make it out to be.
i am sure that the other carriers will work it out aswell. i am sure they do not want to lose money either.
yall got me in a panic for nothing.

I am in State Government and it is BIG for us. We use the device for e-mail only and only occasional phone. We were told we would lose support for our blackberry servers.

According to this thread, all US Governments and first responders would be exempt:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/rim-stock-legal-discussion/21387-analysis-us-government-intercedes-rimm-ntp.html

ahh, i can see your point. yes, that would be very bad. but from what i can tell from the threads i have read, a settlement is very likely to be the end result. so that would keep the bb servers alive, right?

I respond to everything my wife sends me!

I'm wondering if PIN messages and the BBMessenger falls under NTP's specific or vague claims.

Steve

At this point the general opinion I get from people on the job is RIM is going to shell out a whole crap load of money wither now or for the rest of there damn lives. Stopping service will create and generate more problems for people then they really want to start. There are thousands of large corporations that use these things and there everyday success is strapped to there hip.

I am covered my the Gov't guideline and will be safe. Don't quote but I think we will be okay at our own expense. Higher bills.

I can't see a settlement costing existing users any additional money. We don't pay money to RIM, we pay it to our carrier. The reason we pay more is that because for each device that the carrier provisions right now, the carrier pays RIM a portion of money.

If there is a 'shutdown', RIM will not be allowed to provide the service to the carriers, which should in fact cause a reduction in what existing users pay, due to the fact that the carrier now doesn't have to shell money to RIM each month for the number of handhelds on the network using the blackberry APN.

To make it real simple, the shutdown means that the blackberry APN will end up becoming a sup'd up regular APN, and that our browsing might have to go through that... but then again, I live in Canada and won't have that issue.

cd.

RIM has the cash on its balance sheet; it's trying to get the best terms possible (especially if all NTP's patents are overturned). I say this tho not believing the service will go down. I probably won't believe the service is going down until it actually does . . .