TAG | Nice iPhone, shame about the e-mail (or, why the BlackBerry rules the roost) |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Thursday, 09 October 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 4 The first reason BlackBerry has it all over Activesync is the cost. Sure, I’ve just conceded you must buy a BlackBerry Enterprise Server license – and maintain a box for it to run on – but you have to take into account the monthly ongoing commitment too.Featured Whitepaper
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This flat price covers all your incoming and outgoing e-mail. It also covers all your web surfing using the BlackBerry Browser. (Admins should consider simply disabling the WAP browser via policy settings.) What’s also quite nice is that the BlackBerry Browser runs over the same data channel that your e-mail does, back to your BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This means your web browsing is actually taking place inside your network, behind your firewall. You can view your internal intranet on the BlackBerry web browser without needing to configure any VPN settings whatsoever. The fixed price aspect cannot be underestimated and I believe it is a major factor to be considered. If a department requests a BlackBerry I can assure their management accountant that the device has a fixed upfront cost for the hardware and then a 100% known, 100% reliable and regular monthly charge. There’s no risk of blowing this out. There are no unexpected data costs. By stark contrast, no carrier offers an unlimited flat-price plan for iPhone data or for Windows Mobile data within Australia. In the United States, AT&T do sell an unlimited flat rate data plan (but "unlimited" appears to top at 5GB before AT&T get narky with you!) All other providers have firm caps on the data allowance they bundle with their plans. There are good reasons: for one, the BlackBerry heavily compresses its data. That’s one of the advantages of using the intermediate BES. The ActiveSync models such as the iPhone are instead purely web surfing over the public Internet and downloading data at its regular size. This point needs to be understood; the way push mail on these devices work is purely by opening a connection to Outlook Web Access – that is, the webmail interface to Microsoft Exchange – and specifying a very long timeout value. Fundamentally, they are purely checking e-mail by pulling it from webmail. It works – obviously – but that’s not the point. This mechanism offers no opportunity for compressing e-mail or doing something tricky. And as a direct result you won’t find any telecommunications carrier who will give you a break on the pricing. You don’t have to look far to find stories about new iPhone users stung by hefty data charges. This could be you. The only real mitigation is to sign up for a realistic data plan for your usage and then monitor it monthly, switching up to a higher plan if need be – or to curb your usage. This is true for a business account and for a personal account. You have to be conscious of your data allowance every month – and in a business environment where staff may not necessarily see their phone bill you can be sure this awareness won’t be present. From a dollars point of view there really is no comparison. So, what about usability? CONTINUED |
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