Blackberry data usage pitfall.

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willemvdm

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I'm posting this as a warning and hopefully save someone from falling into the same dark hole as my friend did. However, should a Vodacom rep read this and be able to help, P-L-E-A-S-E do.

Disclaimer, I do not own a Blackberry and has no idea how they work.

A friend of mine has a Blackberry and she watched a 2 hour youtube video on it. Or rather she connected the BB to a PC and watched it on the PC's big screen, assuming that it would count to the normal "free" Blackberry usage. Then she got her account of about R2000. Don't know exactly how much of this is for data, but at lease R1000+ is, that for only watching one video.

I know most of you here would probably say, oh, that's obvious and would not do something like this, but I'm hoping that someone not in the know would also read this and save him/herself some heartache.
 
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We have discussed about this on a few occasions. It is NOT allowed to misuse the BB network like that ! There is a 'workaround' but lets not get into that. If everyone will do like your friend did then the network will become very slow or totally useless.
 
willemvdm said:
I'm posting this as a warning and hopefully save someone from falling into the same dark hole as my friend did. However, should a Vodacom rep read this and be able to help, P-L-E-A-S-E do.

Disclaimer, I do not own a Blackberry and has no idea how they work.

A friend of mine has a Blackberry and she watched a 2 hour youtube video on it. Or rather she connected the BB to a PC and watched it on the PC's big screen, assuming that it would count to the normal "free" Blackberry usage. Then she got her account of about R2000. Don't know exactly how much of this is for data, but at lease R1000+ is, that for only watching one video.

I know most of you here would probably say, oh, that's obvious and would not do something like this, but I'm hoping that someone not in the know would also read this and save him/herself some heartache.
Click to expand...

:D Your friend is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. You cannot stream video with BIS/BES you cannot connect the BB as a gateway for your laptop to access the internet. It uses a different APN to tether devices. This is all well knows issues with Blackberry and if your friend did not know this well ignorance is defence. You must read the TERMS & CONDITIONS of USE for the Blackberry.

A very expensive lesson but a lesson learnt :p
 
intel8080 said:
We have discussed about this on a few occasions. It is NOT allowed to misuse the BB network like that ! There is a 'workaround' but lets not get into that. If everyone will do like your friend did then the network will become very slow or totally useless.
Click to expand...
The nice thing about 8ta is they're currently giving you 500mb per month for youtube streaming.
 
willemvdm said:
Or rather she connected the BB to a PC and watched it on the PC's big screen, assuming that it would count to the normal "free" Blackberry usage. Then she got her account of about R2000.
Click to expand...

Anyone silly enough to tether a BB and think it's still free is asking to be slapped with a bill. I hope she's learnt her lesson. The SP's do make it clear that tethering costs money.
 
Also when streaming a video on youtube from a bb, a warning pops up before you watch that it will incur costs. You friend would have had to click continue before watching the video
 
MOwrt said:
Also when streaming a video on youtube from a bb, a warning pops up before you watch that it will incur costs. You friend would have had to click continue before watching the video
Click to expand...
You'll see they were using the blackberry tethered as a modem.
 
Using a BB as a modem or for youtube is out-of-bundle @ R2.00/per Mb. common knowledge...
 
oob.jpg
 
BIS is a joke. All our Android, iPhone and cheap feature phones that supports only J2ME can browse our mobile websites just fine, BUT no. BlackBerry's would load 3 minutes on a single page due to BIS. We're actually starting to force the Internet APN in our app (which won't be free for the user), but then at least we get OK'ish browsing speeds.

I think on Vodacom BIS is being shaped pretty badly once you exceed like 75MB for the month.
 
How on earth do you guys manage to stream a video - let alone a 2hr video?
 
Just to clarify, she did not use BIS to stream the video, she used some software that came with the Blackberry, I assume it is something similar to Nokia's OVI suit. She assumed it to be part of the BIS service, but as we know, it is in actual fact "packet data" that were available on most phones long before BIS. Hence the huge account.

Again I started this thread in the hope that some other uninformed person may find it and hopefully save him or her from learning this same lesson (of packet data != BIS) the costly way.
 
willemvdm said:
Just to clarify, she did not use BIS to stream the video, she used some software that came with the Blackberry, I assume it is something similar to Nokia's OVI suit. She assumed it to be part of the BIS service, but as we know, it is in actual fact "packet data" that were available on most phones long before BIS. Hence the huge account.

Again I started this thread in the hope that some other uninformed person may find it and hopefully save him or her from learning this same lesson (of packet data != BIS) the costly way.
Click to expand...

Any off device data is not included in BIS.
 
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