BBM is not a proprietary version of sms, its different. SMS is limited to 140 characters while BBM is not, you can send as much text as you want, including pictures, voice notes, files, gps locations (including map), contacts and appointments. BBM uses your data plan so you wont be charged extra to send/receive sms or mms messages (sms/mms messages charges when compared to data are ridiculous), and yes I know there are plans for sms.
The most important reason BBM is better than sms is that you can see the delivery and read of the message in real time. No D for delivered beside the message - it's waiting for delivery because the phone is off or out of the service area, and when the D shows you know the chime has gone off to say a bbm has arrived. When the recipient opens the message you get an R. No guessing like sms messages.
I can turn my phone off during a meeting, and the moment I turn it back on, instantly all the pending bbm messages arrive, not when the sms system gets around to sending it.

I will tell you now that the average person cannot hear to 20khz. Young children can. Anybody who has listened to loud music for any length of time have blown away the top couple of khz of their audio range.
If you have ever gone to a rock concert and been near the front or gone to most dance clubs and you will have sustained hearing damage. If you have ever left one of these venues with ringing ears, or been around loud machinery and noticed the same, then you have sustained hearing loss. Your hearing will recover mostly after the trauma and that will be indicated by the subsiding of the ringing of your ears.
If you want to find out how your good/bad hearing is, spend the money and see an audiologist. You will be surprised on to find out what your hearing is really like.

That american company outsources all the hardware manufacturing to a chinese company.

Umm, how are laws, in either Canada or the US going to stop a multinational from pulling jobs out of either country and shipping them elsewhere, such as Mexico or China.

We certainly can't ban Caterpillar from shipping their machines into Canada in "retaliation" for closing a factory, the NAFTA would pose severe sanctions on Canada for that kind of behavior.

Its simply boils down to this: if your company's stance (caterpillar) is not to deal with unions, and you buy a company that is already unionized, workers at the acquired company should expect that it will be shut, and a new factory will be built in a state that is pro right to work, and anti union.
Caterpillar has done this time after time after time. If you want I'll give LOTS of citations.

GM Diesel spun of its locomotive division to Electromotive. Electromotive was bought by Caterpillar. Caterpillar said that they were paying too much in union labour costs. The labour contract was up December 31 2011. Caterpillar locked out the union January 1 2012 and said they could keep their jobs if they took a 33% wage cut. The union said go to hell. Shortly after Caterpillar purchased Electromotive, they spun up a factory in Muncie Ind., with hungry workers willing to work for minimum wage. Caterpillar closed the plant and shifted the jobs south. The union fucked 400 workers so that it could play hardball with the big 3 auto makers in Canada and "win" higher wage jobs for auto workers. Good work CAW.

The combination of Blackberry and BES is the correct choice if you want a secure enterprise solution. With a BES server you have complete control over the phones. Policies allow logging of everything that the phone does, including if you want all incoming and outgoing text messages, push and pull apps and calling restrictions.
The difference between consumer and enterprise blackberry is that the BES server has a secure key that you create and is unknown to blackberry, bis is controlled by blackberry and is snoopable by governments.
I've found that the battery life is better on a blackberry, but the browser isnt the greatest, but has improved in the newest models. Another thing to keep in mind is the battery is field swappable, so if the battery wears out, YOU can switch it out, or carry a spare.
Blackberry made the mistake of getting into consumer phones, but for enterprise situations, blackberry is the best way to go.

The reason for BES is to make sure that employees don't do stupid things and run up the data usage and cell minutes. Enterprises want locked down phones for control and accountability. Without that control corporations won't move from blackberry.

Actually not so. I had to have a survey done to mark some specific spots for calibrating our gps receivers for dgps. He used a Trimble receiver to mark the spot. The spot was within +/- .1 inch and he verified the accuracy using the Russian GLONASS system. I was quite surprised that he actually did this. He said it was standard company procedure.
There was a point in time where the Russians didn't have the money to maintain the system, however that has changed, and I believe they have been adding sattelites to bring it up to full capacity.

I was moving (NEVER use UHAUL) and informed Bell of the move. They said no problem. On the day of the move my old line was cut and I plugged in the phone at the new location and it didn't work.

Big surprise there.
I called up Bell repair and told them of the problem, to which I was told "didn't you know we're on strike?" No, not really. Then I was told it would be no more than a week, as management was doing the repairs.
Meanwhile Rogers had been and gone and my cable and internet were working great.

After a couple of weeks of hassling bell for phone service and the queue going from a week to a month to at least 3-4 months, I told them to forget it at got Vonage that afternoon.

Been a very happy Vonage customer ever since.

In all honesty I only use a single stick into the router. The documentation says it will provide fail over. I believe the idea is that if you use a cable or dsl link and it goes down, only then will it switch over to the cellular service. Most cell providers also provide a coverage map, and the type of cellular service provided ie 1x, gsm, cdma, edge, 3g, hspa. I would use one of those maps during my trip planning so I would be in an area with appropriate coverage.

I have set up an internet connection using the cradlepoint mbr1000. A very cool little device.
I set this up for an OHL team we that we drive around into a 56 person coach along with a 3000W inverter. This allows up to 18 people (18 outlets) to plug in their laptops and get high speed internet access.

The setup was a snap, I just grabbed a rocket stick, plugged it into the router, gave it juice and followed the setup instructions. Setting up the security, and (yes) parental controls was a snap. So long as there is a cell tower they have access to the internet, and most importantly has yet to drop the connection at highway speeds. I'll keep an eye on this thread and answer any questions.