Blackberry Pager Work on board?

[mrkrpan]

Does anyone know if a Blackberry pager (a pager with a little keyboard that you can send short email messages from) will work on board, or on sea, or in port or not at all? I know a vacation is to get away from it all, but it's a necessary request. Blackberry pagers usually work off of satellite systems, so I thought it might be possible...Please advise...thanks

[Firefighter Mickey]

Sorry, satellites are not used according to the blackberry web site. Coverage is provided by various cell phone networks (which network depends on which type of blackberry you have).

It looks like most of the service is provided by various PCS networks, which means that the usefulness of the blackberry is mainly limited to fairly populated/metropolitan areas in the US and Canada.

Your best option will probably be to purchase the unlimited internet access package for use on board the ship, and do something web based.

[EpcotKilterFan]

The Blackberry that I used for a while did use satellites to get their messages. So I would think that it would work on the ship.

Just a side note: during the WTC event, Blackberry's were the one of the only way people could communicate because the largest cellular towers were on the trade center and the other towers were overloaded.

I loved my Blackberry!!!!!

Debbie

[Firefighter Mickey]

My mistake - this was very well buried in the blackberry (www.blackberry.net) web site; it's certainly not a capability that they seem to highlight.

Apparently they do have agreements with at least one company (in Canada) to offer 1-way satellite paging.

www.skytel.com also sells blackberry's, but I can't find anything on their web site that specifically claims to offer 1-way paging with the blackberry - only with their typical pagers.

It looks like any sort of reasonable 2-way capabilities would require something like Iridium, and the uplink/downlink frequencies used by Iridium are no where near what the blackberry uses (since it's still basically just a cell phone). However, Iridium does offer 2-way data capabilities via their phone. I guess even though they went bankrupt, they are still selling the service, so for a mere $625 you can get the phone, $25/month access charge and then $1.39 to $1.59 per minute air time (though it looks like they might offer some package deals).