NextWave Wireless: Benefiting From Blackberry Enabling HTML In Emails

If you are a Blackberry (RIMM) user, you are familiar with the fact that emails containing HTML links (graphics) don’t display the graphics, but rather cause you to have to scroll down past that jibberish HTML text. It’s ugly and annoying, but those of us who are engineering-minded know the reason we have to suffer through this sub-optimal experience: bandwidth. By stripping each email of all of those colors and pictures, less bandwidth is utilized.

This goes to the heart of Blackberry’s main argument to the carriers, such as T-Mobile USA and AT&T. Unlike other email-capable handhelds, Blackberries provide for a more predictable – and lower – bandwidth utilization, putting less strain on the already-congested cellular frequencies. This is why the price of unlimited Blackberry use, which can mean many hundreds of emails every day, is very low compared to many other devices. In the case of T-Mobile USA, unlimited Blackberry email is $10 per month and in some places in Europe it’s 5 Euros per month.