[dc/dc]

I appreciate your desire to make it work, but you're not close unfortunately. I am the voice of experience and I'm trying to save you some time because i know how bad even the expenive private internet can be. I lived in Afghanistan for 18 months in three different cities and used all four carriers. Nothing is going to happen on a BlackBerry without BIS. Having the service books from AT&T will do nothing, and knowing the APN will only allow you to use some third party apps, but nothing that you want (e.g., BBM). CS can activate BIS for you, they just don't want to. You can try my first suggestion of getting a local to call, or if you trust one of the LNs on your base, have them take the phone to an Etisalat shop in town. I would strongly suggest wiping your device before handing it over to a local though if you go that route.