After getting my Treo 650, I found that I couldn’t access any data (GPRS) services – mail, messaging, web surfing, etc. This was odd, since the folks at the Cingular store had sold me a data plan to accompany my chosen voice plan. I spent several hours last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the phone to Cingular [thank heavens for phone headsets – at least I could get on with my work while I was on hold], discussing why my data services weren’t working. Everyone I talked to assured me that they had the situation in hand, were working on it, would resolve it shortly….
On Thursday I finally got to talk to a Data Services Specialist. He immediately told me that the reason for my problem was simple: I’d been sold the wrong plan. I’d been offered a choice between an unlimited data plan ($29.99/mo) and a limited plan ($19.99/mo); feeling cheap, I’d chosen the latter. The DSS told me that neither of these plans would support the Treo; I needed a $29.99 $39.99 “PDA Plan”, which included unlimited data and some other stuff. Sigh. Several hours later (and a power cycle), I was in business.
At first I cynically thought that this was just a trick to get me into an unlimited data plan, but after watching the Blazer web browser doing its thing for a while I realized that it made sense. Unlike WAP browsers optimized for minimal feeds, this is a full-blown HTTP(S) browser. I can open my home page and suck down a quarter of a meg in a few seconds; clearly I would blow through any limited data plan in a couple of days. (Of course this doesn’t explain why a Cingular salesperson sold me an unusable plan, and why customer support failed to identify the problem for three days.)
The great news is that the email client supplied by Palm supports full SSL-secured IMAP and SMTP, which means I can access my Sun email through our “Edgemail” gateway. This is going to be phenomenally useful….
[NOTE CORRECTION TO PLAN PRICE]