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To further this, BlackBerries relied on a special GPRS APN to get access to the internet. BlackBerry had VPNs and leased lines with major carriers and Blackberries would communicate via the APN to proxies located in BlackBerry data centers. All the network config was stored on the phone in "Service Books" and could be pushed out via carriers or BES Admins.

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Yes. The Service Book carried a lot of information that these days people take for granted on most devices. And with the APN down and nothing handshaking and serving a default service book (which, incidentally, was served over a proprietary TCP connection IIRC), the phone just won't get the right configurations.

That is why I said it _should_ still work for base calls (and likely SMS), but nothing else, really.

I edited an old service book to gain MMS functionality on my Bold 9900. My carrier (Koodo Prepaid, Canada) doesn't have BIS and never did. If I lose any other functions, I'll probably have a look at the other service books to find out what's in there.

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