BlackBerry’s Bridge to Nowhere

Resource from:http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/blackberrys-bridge-to-nowhere/?scp=1&sq=BlackBerry&st=cse#

By IAN AUSTEN

The BlackBerry PlayBook, Research In Motion’s first entry in the tablet computing world, arrived in stores on Tuesday. But first-day buyers who use AT&T as their wireless carrier were immediately frustrated when they tried to use a key feature of the PlayBook.

Curiously for a company that made its reputation on portable e-mail, R.I.M. did not include a mail app on the PlayBook. Instead it requires customers who want more than webmail to pair the tablet with a BlackBerry phone using a software application it calls Bridge. Under that system, the PlayBook effectively becomes a giant screen for the phone, which actually stores all of the mail data and related material such as datebook entries.

But almost as soon as the first PlayBooks appeared in stores, AT&T customers began complaining in online forums that their carrier had blocked the use of Bridge and thus disconnected their new purchase from their phones.

It was the latest stumble for the PlayBook which several reviewers, including The Times’s David Pogue, have found to be a promising product undermined by having been brought to market before it was finished.

In a series of e-mails, Mark A. Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T said that Bridge was blocked because “we just received the app for testing.” He added that the company “can’t say yet how long testing will take.”

Certainly Bridge appears to have been a last-minute job. When I was at the headquarters of R.I.M. in Waterloo, Ontario, just over two weeks ago, the company was unable to demonstrate a working version of the app.

Brenda B. Raney, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, declined to discuss that company’s specific plans for Bridge because it had not yet announced that it will sell the PlayBook. But she added: “we don’t disagree with the R.I.M. description of how the product will work on our network.”

In online postings, some users blame R.I.M. for not making the app available in time for testing by carriers. R.I.M. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But the overwhelming majority of postings faulted AT&T for the situation. Many of its customers also suggested that the delay was less about testing than it was about AT&T figuring out a way to charge its customers extra for linking their PlayBooks with their phones.

Mr. Siegel declined to comment on what conditions or charges AT&T might impose on its customers for using Bridge. “All of this is speculative until we test the app,” he wrote.