Blackberry dummies 2 Manual page 144

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Part II: Getting Organized and Online with Your Storm
Sometime during the last millennium, Research
In Motion (RIM) wasn't even in the phone busi-
ness. Before BlackBerry became all the rage
with smart phone features, RIM was doing a
tidy little business with its wireless e-mail.
Back then, RIM's primitive wireless e-mail ser-
vice was served by network service providers
on a radio bandwidth: DataTAC and Mobitex
networks. These were separate from a typical
cellphone infrastructure's bandwidth.
RIM devices at that time already had PIN-to-
PIN messaging. This type of messaging is akin
to a pager, where a message doesn't live in a
mailbox but is sent directly to the BlackBerry
A little bit of RIM history
So when you use PIN-to-PIN messaging, that's another way of saying sending a
message from one BlackBerry to another BlackBerry.
PIN stands for personal identification number (familiar to anyone who's ever
used an ATM) and refers to a system for uniquely identifying your device.
Here's the neat part. According to RIM, the message isn't saved anywhere in
this universe except on the one device that sends the PIN message and the
other device that receives it. Compare that with an e-mail, which is saved
in at least four locations (both the sender and recipient's e-mail clients and
e-mail servers), not to mention all the system's redundancies and backups
employed by the server. Think of it this way: If you whisper a little secret in
someone's ear, only you and that special someone know what was said. In a
way, PIN-to-PIN messaging is the same thing, with one BlackBerry whispering
to another BlackBerry. Now, that's discreet.
If you tend to read the financial newspapers — especially the ones that cover
corporate lawsuits extensively — you'll know that there's no such thing as
privacy in e-mail. PIN-to-PIN messaging, in theory at least, is as good as the old
Code of Silence. Now, is such privacy an advantage? You can argue both sides
of the issue, depending on what you want to use PIN-to-PIN messaging for.
Basically, if you like the idea that your communications can be kept discreet,
PIN-to-PIN messaging has great curb appeal. If you don't care about privacy
with no delay. (No one wants a paging system
that moves at turtle speed when you can get
one that moves like a jackrabbit, right?)
Several interesting facts followed from RIM's
initial decision. Of note, most cellphone users
in New York City were left without service
during the 9/11 disaster. The entire cellphone
infrastructure in New York and surrounding
areas was overwhelmed with too many people
trying to use the available bandwidth. However,
one communication device continued to work
during that stressful time: RIM's PIN-to-PIN
messaging kept the information flow going.