Later today my family will be celebrating the marriage of my son, a computer engineer and medical doctor, to his fiancé, a materials engineer and MBA by training, and now employed in the financial division of a resources company. Talk about how to win over the heart of her future father-in-law -- she recently traveled to the Kyrgyzstan (also known as the Kyrgyz Republic) in central Asia. She has a story to tell about how she downloaded her Blackberry email in Krygyzstan, where Rogers has no roaming agreement.. So the steps are:

• Be employed by a company with a mining operations at a 13,000 foot (4,000 meter) elevation.
• Drive up to the mine over a mining development road from the 1,500 foot elevation of the main plain (and I'm told it's a very scenic drive from the capital city, Bishkek, to where the mining road starts, along the shore of Krygyzstan's largest lake.)
• Get out and look north; pull out the Blackberry and search for a network.
• Check a few minutes later and you'll find your email updated.

The secret: a few miles/kilometers north of the mine is Kazakhstan where Rogers does have a roaming agreement. At a 13,000 foot elevation there is enough residual signal from the Kazakhstan operator's towers to do a download. I have not asked about the resulting roaming data charges...??

But it speaks volumes about the sensitivity of the rf engineering in the Blackberry where even weak signals can be picked up and carry the data stream. For those who ask, it was a Blackberry Curve.

Now off to the wedding celebrations; I'll be back next week.

Tags: Blackberry, Kyrgyzstan, Rogers, Kasakhstan

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