[magikaram]

I work for an ISP, and when we provision land lines, its a sort of handshake between the device and our network. Due to older dumbphones provisioning requiring minimal effort, it seems that they don't require the same tools. BlackBerry devices however are running a full-fledged OS that requires support. Since the affected devices are at latest from 2013, it seems reasonable that most of those affected have moved off of said devices.

[TonyTrapp]

Thanks for the explanation, though I think I still don't quite understand it. Is there something that's required to be provided by Blackberry on either side to make this work? I would have kind of expected that 2G/3G/etc. are device-agnostic and would work with just about any device with a valid SIM card trying to connect to the network.

I know someone who's using an older pre-Android Blackberry, so I'll have to figure out for them if they need to get a new phone next week. As they only use it very occasionally, I'd be glad if they could keep using it for simply making calls.

[rcarmo]

The older Blackberries relied on a centralized server for configuration and setup of both public and corporate settings.

The devices _should_ be able to make calls and text (baseline SMS), but they might error out in various things (browser dead, contacts gone, even some menus dead or stalling) and if they are reset you might not be able to get texting back (since it _might_ not rely on the SIM card to set the SMS message center, etc.)

There were so many changes over the years that I’m not sure how much will still actually work, but I think it’s a given that calls will work — just try to get them to backup their contacts somehow, since I think that is the most basic info that was read off the SIM card on initial setup but not written back.

(I was a PM for BlackBerry services at Vodafone in the early 2000s)

[amaccuish]

To further this, BlackBerries relied on a special GPRS APN to get access to the internet. BlackBerry had VPNs and leased lines with major carriers and Blackberries would communicate via the APN to proxies located in BlackBerry data centers. All the network config was stored on the phone in "Service Books" and could be pushed out via carriers or BES Admins.

[rcarmo]

Yes. The Service Book carried a lot of information that these days people take for granted on most devices. And with the APN down and nothing handshaking and serving a default service book (which, incidentally, was served over a proprietary TCP connection IIRC), the phone just won't get the right configurations.

That is why I said it _should_ still work for base calls (and likely SMS), but nothing else, really.

[visiblink]

I edited an old service book to gain MMS functionality on my Bold 9900. My carrier (Koodo Prepaid, Canada) doesn't have BIS and never did. If I lose any other functions, I'll probably have a look at the other service books to find out what's in there.

[thedrbrian]

> The older Blackberries relied on a centralized server for configuration and setup of both public and corporate settings. The devices _should_ be able to make calls and text (baseline SMS), but they might error out in various things (browser dead, contacts gone, even some menus dead or stalling) and if they are reset you might not be able to get texting back (since it _might_ not rely on the SIM card to set the SMS message center, etc.)

I’m not a programmer , I deal with oily things, but why the hell would you rely on a central server for basics like SMS? Surely it should have some basic SMS ability if only to background text the network for the proper SMS setup.

It feels like baked in obsolescence or supreme confidence that you’ll be around forever to send out the settings.

[zinekeller]

> It feels like baked in obsolescence or supreme confidence that you’ll be around forever to send out the settings.

Please pass that message to RIM/BlackBerry. And yes, they did feel like that, until Apple have attacked.

As an aside, Most Android phones below ICS are now also "dead" (https://support.google.com/android/answer/10313246?hl=en, note that Honeycomb do not have phone services baked in) and cannot be provisioned even for very basic service (except for emergency calls).

[rcarmo]

In a normal phone, you don't need to text anything to get the SMS setup - your SIM card should come with the SMS Center MSISDN baked in.

But Blackberries just don't operate like that. They never did while I was using them (until 2015, IIRC, and I had family using theirs for a few more years, so I know the setup process remained the same).

[traceroute66]

> Thanks for the explanation, though I think I still don't quite understand it

The underlying point is that the Blackberry was not your average smartphone.

Your average smartphone (assuming it is not carrier locked) can be used forever (although it would not be advisable to do so due to lack of security and OS updates).

The Blackberry was a wolf in sheep's clothing. It might just look like another smartphone, but it had heavy upstream dependencies:

     - Specific carrier contracts were required (i.e. similar to when the iPhone originally came out, although for a long time now you can use an iPhone with any 4G/5G SIM ... this is not the case with Blackberry).
     - If it was an enterprise model, you needed to be running Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) somewhere (it would figure out how by first doing a phone-home to Blackberry HQ in Canada). If it couldn't talk to BES, it became an unusable brick.
     - If it was a consumer model, it needed to phone-home to Canada (Blackberry HQ where they ran a "cloud" servers). I can't remember if you needed an account in Canada, I suspect you did because I think that's how email worked (they would login to IMAP on your behalf and push the mails to you).

Basically it was a heavily push-orientated model, the phones themselves were fairly dumb out of the box.

So I guess the obvious implication here is that the Canada datacentre is going to be killed off. At the same time, many carriers have no doubt already been removing Blackberry plans for new customers already (and perhaps nudging existing customers off).

[rcarmo]

The 8000 series was a custom J2ME shell around a pretty basic set of services that were completely tied to the BES (enterprise server). They even had to be upgraded to work with "public", "unbound" e-mail accounts, which were all routed through RIM's services.

It was almost a thin client, really.

[amaccuish]

I actually miss the architecture. Although the centralisation had its problems, the efficiency was fantastic. Everything was compressed, data was pushed instead of pulled, and with BES every device had an automatic always on VPN-like connection, like WireGuard. And now my phone has to deal with hanging TCP connections, IP address changes and ActiveSync just crapping out.

[thought_alarm]

Right, but that only applies to data and push functionality. It's still not clear why vanilla voice and SMS functionality would be affected.

[rbanffy]

> it seems reasonable that most of those affected have moved off of said devices.

My DevAplha died years ago, but, if you want me to stop using my Q10, you will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Same with my Palm Pre, BTW.

[avhon1]

> the affected devices are at latest from 2013

The BlackBerry Passport is one of the affected models, and was released in October 2014. I bought mine new around 2017.