[BGY11]

I was browsing a review of RIM's BlackBerry Torch over at Anandtech, and the editor brought up a point that I've been somewhat agreeing with for quite some time. Currently, data use on a consumer BlackBerry (or any device not running BES) is routed through the BlackBerry Internet Service tunnel. This makes sense for e-mail and BBM, but do we really need it for web browsing as well? The editor at Anandtech noticed the browser was noticeably slower. More specifically, the time to actually start rendering the page was much longer (due to waiting for BIS servers to fetch the page, compress it, and send it back to the device). They did notice a dramatic improvement compared to other devices when stuck on EDGE.

Given the speed of 3G cellular connections now, I'm curious on what other DHC members think about this. I personally don't see a reason why we need web browsing data sent via the BIS link. Not only does it slow things down, but if the BIS servers go down, it doesn't usually just affect one carrier. If web browsing traffic were handled by the carriers (as with any other device), then I think it could be a big improvement.

Thoughts?

(oops, guess I should have posted the review).

 

[TorontoColin]

I think in a world of data caps, data compression like that is invaluable.

If my data was unlimited then I'd find it stupid, but as none of the Big 3 actually offer that anymore, I still think there's value in BIS.

 

[mr weather]

Exactly. I'll take slower rendered pages on my Curve to keep my data usage down.

 

[pappcam]

I think data compression is a great feature on BlackBerry data.

The ridiculous overcharging on data plans by our wireless carriers almost makes it a must.

 

[profets]

I personally can't stand BIS,BES that causes a phone to have to rely on yet another network between the carrier & the internet. This was a great model 10 years ago when devices were running on extremely slow wireless networks and data was an issue, but now with millions (can't imagine how many) blackberrys all connected through BIS I don't understand how much longer RIM can expand their network to handle email/bbm/internet/etc traffic for every device connected.

 

[BGY11]

I can definitely understand why some would be quite happy with RIM compressing data (given the fact carriers love to gouge us on data fees), but I also think that centralizing all BlackBerry data into RIMs servers isn't necessarily the right approach either. Over the past year, there has been quite a few outages that affected a significant number of people.

Ideally, I think having the option to disconnect from BIS (yet still retain most data functions) would be a good idea. That way if people want a faster web experience or need to access the web when BIS has issues, they can still do so.