BlackBerryInsight

Introduction

I just did some research on BlackBerry contracts in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong S.A.R.). I guess there might be some of you who would like to know more about this topic. Even if you are not from Hong Kong you might be interested in contracts for BlackBerry devices and plans somewhere else. It often gives you an overview of the prices out there. Anyway, as I was personally interested in this topic, I thought it might be a nice step to share this information with you.

First of all, my preferences:
It would be great to have one the recent BlackBerry devices with the newest technologies. Therefor, a BlackBerry should:

• have a built-in GPS receiver
• support Wi-Fi
• support GSM (as Hong Kong’s networks are GSM powered)
• have a camera
• have a microSD slot

Devices

Unfortunately, there is no BlackBerry with all those features available by now. The most interesting ones in Hong Kong are:

The great thing in Hong Kong is: If you are signing a contract at a provider like 1010 HK CSL you will get the price of the device credited to your monthly bill. E.g. you buy an 8820 for HK$ 4288. You just pay this sum at the day of purchase. Every month you get a bill (according to your contract) and you will get 1/10 of the purchase price credited to it. This would be HK$ 428.80 every month. You will get this for ten months which result in a free device after all.

Contracts and Charges

1010 HK CSL has two essential plans for individuals:

• 1010 + BlackBerry for Individuals: Monthly Plan
• 1010 + BlackBerry for Individuals: Traveller Monthly Plan

The traveller plan is a bit more expensive than the normal monthly plan but includes free roaming in an area of your choice. So for example, if you are travelling a lot in Asia, you can enjoy free BlackBerry service roaming in Australia, China (PRC), India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. There is also a special China Traveller Plan which provides only free roaming in China Mainland.

Both (normal and traveller) plans are available as 5 MB and 50 MB packages. You can find an overview on this below:

If you are on any of those plans and you are travelling out of your “free roaming area” (e.g. you don’t have the traveller plan or you are not in the area your traveller plan uses the world roaming includes) you have to pay charges depending on the provider you are roamed into. in Germany for example you would pay something between HK$ 0.12 (O2 Germany) and HK$ 0.30 (Vodafone) with different minimum charge units. However, it seems to be still quite cheap.

Data Plans

While all mentioned rates above are just for the BlackBerry email service you can also get normal data usage plans. If you want to surf the web or use third party applications that connect to internet services, you might need one of those plans. An overview on this can be found below:

There is also a traveller package for data usage which would cost HK$ 338 per month including 15 MB of traffic if you decide to travel into a certain region (e.g. Asia like mentioned above). All charges thereafter - no matter which data usage plan you are on - cost the usual HK$ 0.03 per KB.

We hope you are now a bit more informed in what is available for individual BlackBerry users in Hong Kong. Please keep in mind that all of those charges, plans, devices, fees, and information are just from one provider (1010 HK CSL). There are more providers available like SmartoneVodafone and Hutchison.

Links:

• 1010 HK CSL
• 1010 HK CSL BlackBerry Site
• Smartone Vodafone
• Hutchison / 3
• A BlackBerry Guide for Hong Kong

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