BBOM is the short form for Broadband on mobile. It may come in different variations from the different telcos. It essentially provides your device with the capability to go online, and can cover plenty of bundled data from 1GB to unlimited.

When BBOM is used on Blackberry phones, you can use it to go online and use certain online 3rd party apps. However, you can’t use the email client or official Blackberry services. This is because such services fall under the umbrella of “Official RIM Developed Applications”.

When taken in light of the above, it can be seen that the Blackberry is in a completely different league. It is in a class of its own. This is because in addition to being able to surf the internet and use 3rd party applications, the Blackberry, unlike the iPhone, also has official applications developed by RIM. These official RIM applications include the Blackberry’s main emailing service, which is deemed to be the industry’s most robust and secure.

This explains why Blackberries cannot receive emails to their main inbox via BBOM. Emails and official Blackberry apps are routed through the official Blackberry Servers and handled securely to your device. BBOM on the other hand, routes directly to the host servers and through the telco’s airwaves only. As such, Blackberry devices cannot receive emails into their main inbox via BBOM, but can do so via BIS or BES. Alternatively, Blackberry devices may also receive emails via BBOM but by using 3rd party emailing applications, and not RIM’s default emailing service.