Don't They Ever Read their Emails

Recently I have been noticing the wave of Blackberry hitting the shores of Malaysia, with the local telco pushing the benefits of such devices. Invaribly, it has become somewhat of a status symbol to carry one to read and do quick replies to emails. However, I also noticed that these are the same "busy" business people who would not even reply their emails promptly. Recently I have been dealing with a number of people and as usual courtesy I would send them an email thanking them for meeting and reminder for next steps. And it has been couple of weeks, on 3 separate occasions, these blackberry totting folks has not replied.... so sometimes I really wonder if they are using those devices or merely as status symbols.

The other issue with Blackberrys that is plaguing users is the lack of "one charge" roaming for data connection within Asia. Unlike the US plans which allows for global one charge roaming, in Asia service providers have not offerred such roaming charge packages. Despite warnings by their service providers, those who are hooked to the convenience of checking the weather, stocks or even BB chat on their devices, arrive home from their trip overseas to horror of a high data roaming bill in the thousands. Some Asian countries are still charging per byte data rates for roaming customers. Those who have their corporate BB will probably never notice it while those who pay their own bills gets this shock and vow never to data roam with their BB, thereby defeating the purpose of the device able to be used for emailing while abroad.

Even with the iPhones, this could be problem especially for those who are addicted to the iPhone MAP application, which uses the 3G or GPRS data networks to identify users location. Even a simple Facebook update or Weather application update will cause the iPhone to connect with the data networks while roaming, unless the 3G and data/location services has been turn off when overseas. Alas, since the iPhone is so user friendly, most will never know to turn that feature off, unless they end up pay thousands for their overseas roaming charges.