Blackberry

[Guest RealEstateBroker]

Hello all, I see all the new AIS ads for Blackberry and asked Cingular about service there. They said yes no problem. I signed up for Cingular International Blackberry service, only $20/month more than the regular USA program. I stay in BKK/Jomtien about 15 days a month and if it works the same as in America I will be a very happy guy. Thanks

[autonomous_unit]

Not sure what you are asking... yes you can roam with GPRS from a US provider in Thailand, if you have enabled roaming with your contract and your device supports the 900/1800 band that is used here. I roamed for a few days using a T-Mobile USA phone to use GPRS, just until I had a local contract.

I would read the fine-print of your contract about a dozen times before considering that though... I have found (several years ago) that both T-Mobile USA and Cingular are happy to tell you that things work and only explain the ridiculous billing after you've roamed internationally. For example, did you know you pay double international roaming rates when someone calls your US mobile number from the US and it gets forwarded to voicemail? It took me about 15 minutes on the phone with a T-Mobile representative to force them to disable conditonal call forwarding. They have it set so the network overrides the options you try to set from your phone, immediately restoring call-forwarding!

You can get a voice plan here in Thailand with unlimited GPRS for about $30-40 US per month. You can also just get a pre-paid SIM and pay for GPRS as you go.

[Guest RealEstateBroker]

Hello, yes I have a DTAC GPRS account, 1 baht/minute. Works great most anyplace.

What I want to know is if my Blackberry will roam on the AIS data system for instant

emails just as it does in the USA. This is a automatic (Push) system not a pull system

that makes you log in to your email provider.

When I am outside Thailand I read the Bangkok Post at www.PressDisplay.com whick shows

the entire newspaper including all the ad's. The last couple of weeks AIS has been advertising

the Blackberry but most of the stuff is in thai.

Thanks !

[tjo o tjim]

My Cingular blackberry roams fine on DTAC and Orange in Thailand, and is iffy on AIS. Push e-mail is fairly flawless, but the web browsing can be flaky.

It is especially bad on fringe coverage areas.

[tjo o tjim]

One more thing, blackberry service is independent of the sim, so if you get your phone unlocked it is easy enough to swap sim cards as-needed and not need to reconfigure anything on the bb. Handy little feature!