After the deployment of the TCP/IP stack on Blackberries, prosumer/individual demand for 3rd party BES/MDS hosting will definitely go down but not dissappear. I have decided I will probably keep my Mailstreet BES/MDS because of the below reasons:
- You typically only get 10megs with BWC. You don't get a big Exchange mailbox, 100+ or 250+ megs or even a gigabyte;
- You can only get wireless over-the-air full-PIM synchronization over BES/MDS. Wirelessly synchronize your entire Microsoft Outlook (Addressbook, Calendar, Tasks, Notes) to Blackberry? Still need BES/MDS.
- Better rules-based mail filter capability (especially with 4.0 infrastructure) with BES/MDS; You want to add a mailfilter that you can't do with BWC? Tough. Still need BES/MDS.
- Your carrier may not allow OTA downloads even if other socket apps work;
- Your carrier may limit OTA downloads. You're trying to download software over 70 kilobytes on TMobile? Tough. You need BES/MDS.
- Make your Blackberry email & Internet work with carriers that don't support Blackberry, such as Fido Canada. (Bring Your Own Access).
- Port blocking on some carriers;
- BWC has configurable restrictions that the carriers might use
- Some carriers may not enable the TCP/IP stack;
- Better performance, due to slow BWC servers;
A few days ago, my @rogers.blackberry.net address took 5 minutes to arrive, while my BES/MDS email arrives in just 3-4 seconds. Usually both are almost identical in speed. It's true -- a slow BWC often doesn't have any impact on the performance of BES/MDS. Web surfing through BES/MDS was also faster too in those times of a heavily loaded BWC. When I reconfigure the browser to download through BWC then BES/MDS, then BWC, then BES/MDS, I can see a very clear peformance improvement by surfing through BES/MDS. Sometimes web requests are delayed by over 30 seconds, while I get a start of a download in a short moment when web browsing through the BES/MDS. Not always, Rogers BWC is usually very fast. (Doesn't RIM operate the blackberry.net servers though? If so, obviously they prioritize BES/MDS traffic then.)
RIM very much intends to keep advantages of having a BES. They're continually adding more and more features to BES, to keep people using BES even when it is no longer necessary for other things.