Thanks to all the good information on this site, I was able to use my BB Tour in Argentina these past couple of weeks and will review some of what my experiences were:
Getting the actual SIM was a much tougher job than the last time I was here in Jan 2009 when you could just buy a SIM at a Kiosko or Locutorio. This time I had to go to a specific Movistar office (after visiting their repair and retail outlets with no success) where they would sell me a SIM for $25ARS that had zero phone credit. I needed to supply a passport number and register a bunch of stuff so that it wouldn't be some anonymous criminal using the phone. Of course they didn't sell re-charge cards at that office, so had to pick one up at a Kiosko.
Upon receiving a text saying that the account was active and then loading a recharge card, I texted "DATOS" to 2345. I got back the same text that travelingcanuck mentioned on a previous post. It implied the offer was only valid to Nov. 30, 2010. This being Argentina, you can't believe anything you are told, even by text message!
The data plan was indeed working. I could verify by calling "*444" and checking the account balance by pressing "1". After hearing the balance in pesos, if I would press "1" again, I would get the details of any other bonuses or plans. I would hear how many megabytes were left to use letting me know the data plan was still active. It seemed to last longer than two days each time I activated it. Yesterday when I checked, I didn't get any info on the amount of data used, but data was still working and I had about 60 pesos of credit so I kept using it without re-starting the data plan, big mistake. By that evening, my balance had gone to zero and nothing worked until I could get a recharge. So data works without a data plan, but it is extremely expensive to use and will drain your account balance to zero quickly.
Other BlackBerry notes: The standard browser would not work at all, whenever I tried to bring it up, I would get an app error that required a reboot. I also wasn't getting e-mail by the standard blackberry e-mail service. Fortunately Gmail is an excellent work-around, even for non Gmail addresses. You just need to configure your Gmail to pull in mail from your other e-mail services and they will all end up in your Gmail inbox which you can conveniently access from the Gmail app on your blackberry (make sure to install it before you get to Argentina). For browsing, I used Opera mini and it seemed to work fine (make sure you install it before getting to Argentina). I was able to get Google Maps working and its GPS functions too.
I did need to configure the APN settings as per gunt86's previous post. It was a little tricky to find where to put those settings: Options->Advanced Options->TCP/IP is where I found them.
Movistar seemed to work almost everywhere I went. When I was out in the country with my cousin, his Personal phone wouldn't get a signal, but he got a call out on my Movistar service. We took a bus to Cordoba and I had a signal most of the way. Occasionaly it would switch to roaming on the Personal system, but I still had a signal.
My phone was showing EDGE in Buenos Aires and GPRS in Cordoba and many other places, so speed was pretty crappy, but for me keeping in touch by e-mail was the most important thing for my needs. If my BlackBerry had supported WiFi, I think I could have used the standard BlackBerry e-mail when in range of WiFi, but maybe someone else can verify if that would have worked or not.
My wife's CDMA android phone was pretty useful even without the ability to be used as a phone here because it supported WiFi. You can find WiFi almost everywhere here, even on long haul buses (but the bus systems are often broken).
Hopefully I covered everything in this mini-novel!
Julian
