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]
Posted by geoff2 at February 19, 2005 11:59 AMI just signed up for a Treo650 from Cingular as well.
I had the same problems with data and had to call support at which point they told me to reboot the thing and it worked.
I'm on a $20 -> 20M plan and was told it was $79 a month for unlimited data.
If you're getting unlimited data for $29.99 then I'm going to have to call them back. I really need the unlimited data ... then I can get bluetooth working and dialout over it :) (though i think its crippled right now... stupid!)
But yeah... its a really great phone. I have SSH, IMAP, SMTP, txt, and a full browser. I've hacked a bunch of realtime train schedule bookmarks with nextbus and even use en.wapedia.org to grab any wikipedia page I want.
Good times!
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Burton at February 19, 2005 05:50 PMI am on the AT&T half of Cingular. They offer both a $44 and an $79 unlimited plan. Their web site offers little explaination of the difference.
After extensive browsing on sites like howardforums.com, the distinction is in the type of IP address you get. The $44 account gets you a NAT'd 10.x.x.x address which is incompatible with some firewalls or VPN's. The $79 gives you a static or NAT-less address (I believe). At least they market it (if you can find someone who actually knows) as the high end corporate unlimited data access.
According to insiders both are set for high volume data, unlike the WAP version of unlimited.