I’m continuing to work on various projects for my new small business clients. Things are, by and large, going well. The Hosted Exchange system is working wonderfully, the new laptops are set up, as are the new printers and Chilibox network appliance. But I’ve hit a snag. And it’s the type of snag that really gets my boxers in a bunch.

I recommended the BlackBerry platform for wireless messaging. It works well, and our Hosted Exchange provider fully supports it via BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). So the customer purchased three shiny new BlackBerry 8700gs from a large Chicago area computer reseller (to remain nameless). The service for the BlackBerries was with T-Mobile. So the first problem we encountered was getting T-Mobile to authorize them for service. This was not unexpected; this was a business account, and it wanted to get credit reference information to move forward with activating service.

So once the credit references were checked and T-Mobile authorized service, we thought everything would be ready to roll. I went ahead and activated BlackBerry service on the Exchange mailboxes for this client. Each user was sent a message with a temporary password which they would plug into their Enterprise Activation (EA) program on their handheld. To my surprise, the EA “handshake” kept misfiring. We called the reseller back and had it confirm that these BlackBerries were truly provisioned for Enterprise Activation, and we were assured they were. I reset the activation passwords and we tried it again. Nothing.

My gut told me this was a carrier issue. And to prove it, I did a little experiment. I used my own BlackBerry 8700c (service with Cingular), and performed an Enterprise Activation on it to one of my client’s mailboxes. Presto, I had it working in mere minutes, no problem. The 8700g and 8700c were nearly identical devices, they were just with different wireless providers.

I called the Tech Support number at the reseller the T-Mobile BlackBerries were purchased from. I got through to a BlackBerry specialist and we starting doing some digging. He put me on hold and contacted the Activation people with RIM. Low and behold, RIM showed that those devices were actually with Vodaphone? What?!! Vodaphone isn’t even a carrier in the U.S. Furthermore, the specialist reported that the devices weren’t set up for Enterprise Activation.

So between that discovery, plus my successful experiment using my own BlackBerry, I had further proof that this was truly an issue with the wireless provider. I went back to the reseller and told it to make things right… that it needed to make the calls because we’d already wasted hours in a wireless wild goose chase. We have the client, myself (as technical resource), the reseller, the wireless carrier (T-Mobile), and finally, RIM. Somewhere, the ball got dropped. I didn’t feel like we should be the ones chasing it around the playground.

I stand by my recommendation of the BlackBerry as a wireless messaging platform for this customer. I’ve not been impressed by any of the Treos currently available, and none of the WinMo 5 handsets really appealed to myself or the customer.

So I’ll pick up where I left off next time and we’ll see if this can be resolved. Stay tuned.

[tags]t-mobile,hosted exchange,blackberry 8700g,bes,enterprise activation[/tags]