WiFi Blackberry

A while ago I came into possession of a WiFi enabled Blackberry 8820. I can't and won't be commenting on how this affects voice calling. Blackberries with WiFi only support UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access), as far as I know none of the mobile phone providers in Canada currently support UMA. I know for sure that mine doesn't. From what I've learned about UMA I'm not holding my breath. UMA allows your mobile provider provide voice service using Voice Over IP (VoIP) and unlicensed wireless (specifically Bluetooth and WiFi) technologies. Initially there are a number of conclusions that are easily leapt to:

• There is WiFi access at home, the cottage, work or my favorite coffee shop;
• If my call is going via WiFi and the Internet, I'm not using cell tower airtime;
• So UMA calls made from home, work or an open access point should be free!

Alas no. If you look at the system diagram at the link above you will see that the Unlicensed network (WiFi) only replaces the cell tower part of your provider's infrastructure. Your call is still handled by the core mobile network.

So what good is UMA. Well it allows mobile providers to provide service by setting up a WiFi or Bluetooth access point instead of a full on cell tower. Obviously this would be a lot cheaper. It could allow them to handle more traffic in busy areas, or places where traditional signals don't penetrate easily. They could, but aren't required to, allow me to connect using my WiFi router at home or the cottage where licensed coverage is poor or non-existent. So UMA is good for providers. That isn't necessarily bad for us consumers, but don't expect free unlimited voice calls using UMA over your own WiFi router.

Ok, so is getting a Blackberry with WiFi worth the cost, wait, effort? I think very definitely it is. If you are using a Blackberry and are worried about voice calls you are probably on the wrong platform. The Blackberry is first and foremost a data communications device. Blackberries do voice fairly well, and it is convenient not to have to carry around a phone as well as a PDA, unless you do a lot of voice calling. Data communications with WiFi is everything that voice communications with UMA is not. Even though my provider does not support UMA, I can connect to the internet using WiFi where ever I can get access. I can store my favorite networks and automatically to connect whenever I'm in range. EMail, PINs, web browsing all prefer WiFi over GSM/EDGE when available. One of the nicest features is an additional browser configuration for WiFi. I have my internet (GSM/EDGE) and WAP browsers configured to not download images, the WiFi browser is configured to download all images. I can even set bookmarks to use the WiFi browser to only fetch bookmarks if I have WiFi service, Internet or WAP browsers if I'm willing to use GSM/EDGE bandwidth to fetch them.

The actual implementation of this data magic is not a lot different from the way UMA handles voice. When accessing the internet over GSM/EDGE the Blackberry uses the mobile data provider's network to connect with the Research in Motion operations center. From there the connection may be relayed to the appropriate Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), or to the Blackberry Internet Server (BIS) which satisfy the request, push email, etc. When the unit switches over to WiFi, it opens up a connection that looks like Secure Hypter-Text Transport Protocol (HTTPS) to RIM which (presumably) does the data transport work in lieu of the mobile network. In theory this means that RIM could keep track of the bandwidth consumed and relay that information to the mobile service provider for billing. I'm hoping they don't because this really makes the Blackberry much more useful. I can carefully sip at essential data, and keep in touch when I'm on the move. I can participate in the full multi-media internet experience (to the extent a Blackberry is able), chat up a storm, or play on Facebook when I'm near a hot spot without dragging out the laptop, sitting at the desktop or worrying about huge data charges. Or so I hope, I'll let you know when the bill comes in.