[ThomasB]

Fighting with Rogers to get a decent deal on a BES plan.

They forget to read the details and offer a great plan and when I say yes they say "oh sorry you are BES and must move to the corporate plan"

(I run several small BES servers for customers.)

They say that BES is much more expensive for Rogers to deliver and hence the premium price.

Is there a reason for the price difference or is it just a marketing shelf.

Tom

[knottyrope]

It is needed for BES. In the US it is about $10-12 per month more on most carriers.

BIS service will knot connect to a BES server.

[x14]

It comes down to BIS and BES dataplan. BES network is a more reliable service. You hear more about BIS outage then you do BES outage. BlackBerry on BES also uses more data due to the extra feature of wireless sync of calendar, contacts, memo, etc.

[voda_black]

In my opinion reasoning is two fold:

RIM needs more resources deployed for BES. I THINK a carrier needs to pay a certain bit of the revenue from the plan to RIM.

Because primarily corporates use it, they can get away with charging a higher price.

[voda_black]

Originally Posted by x14

It comes down to BIS and BES dataplan. BES network is a more reliable service. You hear more about BIS outage then you do BES outage. BlackBerry on BES also uses more data due to the extra feature of wireless sync of calendar, contacts, memo, etc.

True that BES uses more data for the reason above. But I don't think that's the reason for the price difference. Vodafone for example charges a separte price for BIS and BES - but the total allowable data on both plans is exactly the same.

[SteveO86]

As far as I know every company charges different for BIS vs BES. BES will always cost more.

[WorldIRC]

Rogers - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)
Telus - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)
Bell - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)

Noticing a pattern ;) Collusion at its best.

Anywho, on Rogers, many customers who have a corporate code on their account (like when they work for a bank or other very large company), the generally save up to 20% off BES plans (making them not much more money than standard BIS plans).

[penguin3107]

Originally Posted by WorldIRC

Rogers - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)
Telus - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)
Bell - BIS 1GB ($30) BES 1GB ($45)

Noticing a pattern ;) Collusion at its best.

Anywho, on Rogers, many customers who have a corporate code on their account (like when they work for a bank or other very large company), the generally save up to 20% off BES plans (making them not much more money than standard BIS plans).

Collusion? How do you figure that?
BES should be more expensive than BIS. It's not just the quantity of data to consider. There's nothing nefarious going on here.

[hrbuckley]

Originally Posted by penguin3107

Collusion? How do you figure that?
BES should be more expensive than BIS. It's not just the quantity of data to consider. There's nothing nefarious going on here.

He's probably referring to the prices all being the same, but competition will do that too. Especially since what they are selling is essentially the same product from the same supplier, RIM.

[WorldIRC]

Originally Posted by penguin3107

Collusion? How do you figure that?
BES should be more expensive than BIS. It's not just the quantity of data to consider. There's nothing nefarious going on here.

You'd have to live in Canada and better understand the lack of competition and its impacts here!

[nobody7290]

My Carrier charges the same for BES or BIS.
To be exact: Euro 8/Monath for the service, Euro 16 for 150MB.

I talked to a tech support guy about this matter. He told me, they pay more for a BES account then for a BIS.
But, the difference is not worth to make different plans for the Customers.

That could mean:
The difference is small, or, they have only a small customer base which uses BES (more likely in this case).

Anyway, it means that the carriers pays more for BES, and, therefore it is normal, if they charge BES customers more.

I dont know, if "consumers" suck more/less data then "enterprise", and it sounds not likely that carriers pay for traffic, they pay per device.

But BES traffic uses more resources, since for every BES server the servers at RiM must keep open one Connection.

For BIS email or surfing, the RiM proxy can open a connection on demand, or, on a time based schedule (when pulling the mailbox). With BES Servers one TCP connection has to be open all the time.

That would justify additional charges on top of BiS charges, but not an additional charge per MB.

[hrbuckley]

Originally Posted by nobody7290

My Carrier charges the same for BES or BIS.
I dont know, if "consumers" suck more/less data then "enterprise", and it sounds not likely that carriers pay for traffic, they pay per device.

But BES traffic uses more resources, since for every BES server the servers at RiM must keep open one Connection.

For BIS email or surfing, the RiM proxy can open a connection on demand, or, on a time based schedule (when pulling the mailbox). With BES Servers one TCP connection has to be open all the time.

That would justify additional charges on top of BiS charges, but not an additional charge per MB.

This is an interesting theory, but BIS supports IMAP IDLE which allows the BIS server to remain connected to the IMAP server, the IMAP server informs the BIS server when there is new email in the account, the BIS server then fetches the mail and pushes it to the Blackberry. This makes my BIS email delivery as fast as my BES email delivery, and would imply up to 10 continuous connections per BIS device.

[penguin3107]

BES traffic also includes: (which BIS traffic does not)
MDS Connection Services
MDS Integration Services
Policy Services
Software Configuration Services
Collaboration Services
Synchronization Services
ALP
SRP connectivity

All of the above require bandwidth and support which is not a factor BIS-only environments.

Quite simply, BES is far more complex than BIS, regardless of the amount of bandwidth used, or how fast one receives their email messages.

[ThomasB]

Thanks for all the replies.

Not sure if I got the definitive answer I was hoping for.

Sounds like there are some technical differences but the main difference might be the SLA concept.

Bottom line seems to be: You will always pay more for BES.

Tom

[Aroc]

IF memory serves me correct (and it may not as I am getting old) it used to be that BIS (formerly BWC) and BES were priced the same, at least in the U.S.

$45/mo for Domestic BIS/BES (maybe this was after $5 voice discount?)
$69/mo for International BIS/BES

At some point the carriers and RIM decided that consumers would rather pay $30 instead of $45, so the discounted BIS plans were offered. At least that's how I remember it.

It may simply come down to the fact that corporate customers (typically the ones with BES) are willing to pay more. Look at TSupport pricing for evidence of this.

With that said, the BES solution is a halfway decent one. And although all of these figures do add up to a decent amount, I feel in many cases the cost is less than that of an additional full time equivalent salaried employee. With some other mobile solutions (not BES) one might need that additional FTE on staff to handle the work load (or maybe not?). I can't show anyone that BES isn't worth or is worth the money invested. However I have seen largish BES deployments (hundreds of handsets of more) all managed by a single administrator (FTE). That in and of itself is rather impressive and speaks well to the ROI of a BES solution in some cases. Other solutions might require multiple FTEs for the same net result.