I have a company phone, and have for several years. My company, however, is getting out of the wireless business, so to speak. That is, it’s divesting all its company mobiles to the staff that have them, helping them get some discount plans, giving them a modest pay boost to cover a national average for voice, data, or both, and then washing their hands of it all (kinda-sorta — there are some limited exceptions to the new policy, and IT will still be involved in connecting phones to corporate data).
I currently have a Blackberry Curve 8300, under an AT&T corporate contract. I will basically own this phone at the time the wireless divestiture (WD) is done with, and I’ll be paying monthly for the carrier plan.
Though I have a BB, I don’t actually use BES to push company email to my phone. That’s because I’m still a legacy member of the company’s Google pilot, so I still use (Google Apps) GMail. (Well, I usually do — it’s been broken the last week, and I need to do something about that.)
Now the cool thing here is that, esp. since I’m not using Blackberry mail, I don’t have to have a Blackberry. Indeed, we have ways of pushing out our corporate mail to BBs, iPhone 3GSs, and Windows Mobile devices.
Which is unfortunate, because I really want a Nexus One. But … I might settle for an iPhone. Though then the temptation is to wait until next year, at which time Verizon will be servicing iPhones, and all the horror stories I’ve heard about AT&Ts 3G support on iPhones will be moot (or corrected).
But in the short term, I don’t plan on changing anything. My belief is that the current onerous security policy on my BB will be removed (though there will still be a remote control “destroy all data” feature in case it’s stolen and Precious Corporate Secrets are in danger of being revealed), so that I can get an instant-on without a password and waiting for the phone to wake up from lockdown. If so, then I’ll be a happy camper for a while, until I decide I have enough of a yen for an iPhone (or Android, once supported) to save up and buy one.
Anyway, so now I get to figure out (presumably within the AT&T world) what voice and data plans I want and/or can afford. I’ve been fortunate in being able to ignore that mare’s nest for many years. Not any more.