Messaging

I am sooo glad to read your post.  Just yesterday (11/17) I purchased a Blackberry Tour and was setting it up and I couldn't get email to work "all" the time. Sometimes I got email forwarded to my smart phone, sometimes not.  Plus some times I couldn't get the the internet, but other times I could. I am also new to Sprint.  I always had Verizon or AT&T service so I was a little concerned about the network dependability.  Things are better this morning (11/18), I'll see what happens today.

Oh and I love the Berryberry Tour!!!

Starr_Hill

I have experienced similar problems on the Tour ever since I upgraded from the Centro in October. I was not sure whether it was Sprint's service or whether it was the phone, but I think it is a combination of both. The service used to be great before, but even my family members (whom I convinced to switch over) get relatively poor service on the BB Curve. All of us have had frequent dropped calls, sometimes in the middle of our own home where service on the Centro was outstanding (zero dropped calls during all two years that I had it)! It is just getting irritating now, to the point that I either have to toss the Tour or toss Sprint for another carrier. It is a shame, I was quite satisfied with my service up until this point, but when both data AND voice are subpar, there is just little room to decide in such a competitive market. I think it is great that they reduced their rates and have now become a top competitor, but reducing rates is no justification to reduce service.

Ahhh...it is always a struggle to keep a good thing going.

The recent Blackberry Internet Service issues are across all carriers, it is not only Sprint having problems... canceling won't help you get a working Blackberry in those cases. Calling issues may be a problem with the device, I would recommend taking it into a store to have a tech take a look at the device. If you haven't already I would recommend having the phone update the data profile to see if it is just the profile hasn't been pushed to the device due to the recent issues.

Options > Mobile Network > BB Menu Button > Update Profile

It can take a half hour or so for the server to send the information to the Blackberry, so you may not see any change immediately after a provisioning complete message. If you get an error when trying to update the profile there is probably an issue on the network, I would recommend calling into tech support.

I know earlier today I had customers successfully using their berries for data, so it may just be the data profile isn't active on the device.

Sorry, I forgot you were using a Tour not a Curve, they are named differently between the two devices and software versions, it is "Update Profile" on the Curve and "Start Provisioning" on the Tour.

First question of tech support... have you tried turning it off and power cycling the device by taking the battery out for at least 30 seconds? If not, try that first. A reboot fixes most software issues on anything electronic if it isn't consistent across the board.

It sounds to me like the device was not programmed correctly the first time. If the Blackberries are manually programmed they will not be able to connect to the data network to update and access the internet with the latest software updates. The only way to fix the issue is to wipe the device entirely and start like it was out of the box again letting the device activate itself over the air like it should have done. Have you ever had data service working on that device? If not that is probably the issue. Also up in the upper right corner of the device it should say something like 1xEV.

1x means you only have 1xRTT coverage, which will allow voice and text.

1xev means you have an EvDO connection to the tower but cannot connect to the blackberry internet service servers.

1xEV means you should have total connectivity including full blackberry data service.

You should be able to fix it yourself without having to take it into a store or calling tech support if you don't want to but it requires a full wipe of the device. I recommend backing up your data using the Blackberry Desktop Manager, a wipe will take it back to the factory defaults and you will lose everything currently on there. You can either set a password and type it incorrectly 10 times to wipe a Blackberry. Or you can go to Options > Security Options > General Settings > BB Menu > Wipe Handheld and that should do it. After the device wipes and restarts go through the device setup wizard following the prompts and letting it connect to the network and provision itself. This can take some time. Once you finish going through the setup wizard it can take up to an hour for all of the icons for the Browser, Sprint Navigation, SprintTV, etc. to load through from the network. Once the device stops loading those icons you should be good to go as long as it says 1xEV up in the corner.

If that isn't the issue I would recommend calling into technical support. I know that has fixed every Blackberry we have had come into the store that had data issues beyond the BIS outages recently.

Previous to the latest Blackberry software versions it didn't make a difference if it was activated manually or not. In fact originally the devices had to be manually programmed, they did not automatically program and provision themselves. It is only recently that it is now causing an issue due to changes in the way the new Blackberry software provisions with the network. So it may just be that that particular rep does not know. It was just recently posted in the technical support internal site that the issue stems from the initial programming and can't be fixed otherwise.

Keep us updated on whether it helps.

No problem. Hopefully it works. Unfortunately I'm not at work and won't have any access to the network board until after the holiday to check for outages.

If that doesn't work I'd call tech support directly, they have capabilities on the back end systems that I can't do anything about since I an just a retail rep. They have worked miracles for me previously though so who knows.

Keep us posted.