Recently I signed up for Celcom's blackberry service in part, due to a number of recent frustrations I have been experiencing with Maxis's Blackberry service. To cut a long story short, there have been frequent outages and other technical glitches suffered by Maxis which has cost me some sleepless nights and endless frustration (I hate it when a CSR tells you to "off your phone and on it back again..").
Although this is not meant to be a review or a comparison of the two telco's Blackberry services (that will come in the near future once I have fairly evaluated Celcom's service), I am now presented with a dilemma; which telco will be my main Blackberry Service Provider (BSP) and power my BB 8300 Curve?
Previously Maxis was my main BSP while Celcom was my secondary voice line. Now I have BES services for both I am confused as to which setup will serve me best.
My Maxis number is known to all; business associates, personal friends and family members. If I use Maxis as my BSP, I only have to carry one device around which is a great bonus. However, as mentioned previously, Maxis has had some technical issues lately and at times my Blackberry has been down for anything from a few hours to half a day or more. Additionally, but on a totally different level, Maxis isn't very receptive of any suggestions to collaborate for the common good of local Blackberry users. I don't quite understand that; a win-win situation for all parties involved, I help actively promote Maxis and their Blackberry service and Maxis provides me with marketing support and access to their technical staff. They just weren't game which was quite a bummer as I believe the future of Blackberry and the scope for growth in Sarawak is tremendous. Don't forget, Sarawak has a large number of public listed companies, large private companies, state government institutions and other bodies that may benefit from the use of Blackberries.
Not long ago, Celcom announced that it launched it's BIS service, catering to the consumer market and the private individual who longs to experience "push email" as corporations do. I am a BES user; I have access to my own Exchange and BES servers and only subscribe to the BES service at the switching level only; I don't pay any licensing fees to any of the BSP's. Initial inquiries with Celcom CSR's was disappointing; I was told that BES was not available to the private user and a minimum of 10 corporate lines was required before BES was an option for a corporate account. I can now tell you that this is untrue; BES is available to the individual user, however, the Celcom subscriber line must be under corporate as opposed to personal. At least there is no minimum lines required to qualify for BES!
Celcom Global Enterprise team members in Kuching were a great help too (Doris and Valerie.. thanks a lot! You were both great!) and within a day or two I had converted my personal line to corporate and my BES was active.
As a side note, I discovered that if you don't change your device, swapping your old BSP's SIM for the new BSP's SIM card meant that BES was functioning from the very start of the cross-over. All that was required is that you register your device PIN and IMEI at the new BSP's BIS website, delete all email accounts from your old BSP's BIS website and add them to your new BSP's BIS setup (does that sound confusing or what?) and send the service books for your new BSP to your BB. You're all set!
So now, my Curve is powered by Celcom's Blackberry service while my Maxis SIM now resides in my SE K850i acting as a voice only number. I activated the 3G function on Maxis so I could download/upload faster as well as do mobile blogging more efficiently.
That leads me to my problem; I have to carry two devices, my Curve and my K810i. Imagine having to carry both devices every time I played golf or went for dinner. How cumbersome. I could leave the BB behind when I'm playing golf or going for dinners but I am a Blackberry addict and the idea of any period of time without my BB close at hand is unthinkable! Insane!
If number portability would hurry up and be implemented in Malaysia, it wouldn't be an issue but I am not sure when it will be actually implemented. In the mid-90's I was working in Time Telekom as an interconnect analyst and was involved in the first few steering committee discussions on number portability held at JTM in Damansara. That was nearly 10 years ago and Malaysia has still to implement the concept!
To make matters worse, I discover that the K850i doesn't support third party software like Nokia's or even the SE P990 or P1 series! There are some third party software that I find indispensable including a voice recording program, and an advanced call manager type program. I may have to buy another phone to act as my voice phone now! Celcom's BES service requires a 24 month commitment, so you can't terminate before the 24 months are up so I can't reverse my decision (not that I have any plans right now though). How costly..
Right now I am carrying both devices around and unless I decide to inform the whole world that my primary voice number is now a Celcom number, I have no choice. Another plus point for my Maxis line is that the number is very easy to remember while my Celcom isn't as simple. I suppose I could forward all calls from my Maxis to my Celcom but SMS's cant be forwarded and I do receive quite a large number of SMS's (believe it or not but the vast majority of my friends have yet to embrace to Blackberry but I aim to change that soon).
I am so confused!
A review/comparison of both BSP's from a network, technical and service standpoint is in the works; stay tuned!
Labels: Blackberry, Celcom, General, Maxis
