BES Tax?

Many of you may have heard about Good Enterprise Messaging. It’s a corporate encrypted email app that is available for multiple platforms; a standalone program meant to be a BES alternative for iOS and Android. I hear RIM is working on a similar standalone BES app, but thats for another post. I recently found out that on AT&T, one doesn’t need an enterprise plan to use the Good messaging app; unlike BlackBerrys on AT&T, which require an extra $10 for an enterprise plan. For BES Express you do not need to pay this extra $10/month unless you want to be able to do wireless activation but for BES premium enterprise users they get hit with the price increase.

Now the Good messaging program has its faults, but notwithstanding that, is an extra ten dollar monthly BES tax worth it? From what I have learned this is both RIM’s and AT&T’s fault. From what I can tell RIM charges AT&T an extra connection fee for BES and AT&T is passing it along to customers. It just blows my mind that a BES Premium BlackBerry needs to pay $10/month extra even on the tiered data plans where you pay for 2GB of data usage.