BlackBerries, Sidekicks - where art thou on Guam???
I ran across a neat little inserted ad when perusing Amazon just now for the new T-Mobile Sidekick II. That's one nice-ass digital device. Same applies for the latest BlackBerry devices. Or Blackberries in general. Which makes me cringe, seeing as how us here in Guam can't use them at the moment. Dammit.
Me being a journalist, I've looked into this and have arrived at no excuse for the lack of support other than our local telecomms won't pony up the requisite seed money to implement RIM's proprietary servers/software (at least for BlackBerries), which as I understand it is about $20,000. This is largely because of the lack of immediate interoperability with the current networks of our local telecomms - IT&E (PCS), Guamcell Communications (CDMA), and soon, GTA (GSM).
The demand is certainly there...the local military installations have joined big local companies like Continental Airlines and Kmart in asking for such devices to be put into market, which they'd buy up en masse right away. And they'd still be relevant to the local consumer and younger market. Many of us have been clamoring at the ISPs and wireless providers for years to get with the program and see the forest beyond the Motorola and Nokia trees.
I'm saving up for the Audiovox XV6600 PDA smartphone through Guamcell (which BTW, is still even at cheap prices almost $300 more than a Sidekick II) to get 24/7 real Web access - not some dieted WAP replacement - and to do some embedded development with the .NET Compact Framework. I don't really need a PDA device loaded with megabytes upon megabytes of PIM software - just give me a tool to communicate, not take notes. Work smarter, not harder, remember?