1984 (Not the Van Halen one)

Since I travel a lot with my new(ish) job, the company provides me with a cell phone with unlimited data and a worldwide plan. We had service through Cingular, and I had the 8525 smartphone, which I loved. It had windows mobile and mobile versions of the office applications. I even kept up with the gas mileage on my truck with excel. Websense blocks all gaming content from work, so I would use the phone to keep up with geezergamers.

Then one day Cingular crossed the line. One of our guys was in Brazil for two weeks, and at the end of the month, they billed him $8k! The charges included a download 200+MB (data is unlimited, but not out of country, apparently). To his phone, mind you. He had wireless at the hotel, so he didn't use the phone as a modem, so how the heck did he download that much? Anyway, the company tried in vain to get Cingular to negotiate. It went on for 6 months or so with the backcharges and penalties adding up. They finally settled for some large amount, and we dropped Cingular and moved to Verizon.

The only world coverage phone that was available from Verizon was the Blackberry World Edition. I just got mine in a few weeks ago. I don't like it near as much. It's ok, but I miss the touch screen, the bigger hide-away keyboard, and the windows mobile and its simpler integration with my outlook email and calendar. But the main reason that I don't like it is that, somehow, the web browsing is filtered through my company's network. So no more geezer gamers or webmail from my phone. :(

This is really going to suck when I'm in an airport bored out of my mind. Or when I'm at my parent's house 3 hours away, who don't have an internet connection (or computer for that matter) and I'm wanting to surf the web.

I'm hoping someone in the wireless communications biz can tell me how they do it. Just to satisfy my own curiosity.