[Buck_W]

My wife is having a hard time connecting to her company's exchange server using her iPhone. One of her co-workers (not an IT person) suggested the problem might be that she only has the personal data plan, as opposed to the Enterprise plan. She has a 3G iPhone and her software is up-to-date.

After doing some checking, it appears that plenty of other iPhone users have been able to access an exchange server using only the data plan. Plus, I found this:

AT&T iPhone 3G Enterprise Data Plan – SCAM! | AppleMacGeniusVille

For those of you who are more technically savvy, is that on the level?

[-Q-]

Back when I was at a company the used exchange, I had no trouble connecting to the mail server via my iPhone. I've had the standard (non-enterprise) iPhone contract for almost 2 years now.

What does 'having a hard time connecting' mean? Can she not connect at all? Is it sporadic? I know in my previous job I had to enable the password lock on the phone before I could connect to the corporate email. Probably worth talking with one of her IT peeps to see what corporate policies they may have in place.

[Buck_W]

Originally Posted by -Q- 

What does 'having a hard time connecting' mean?

I should have been more specific. She has not been able to connect at all. She is planning to talk to the IT guy, but wanted to first make sure that the iPhone (w/standard data package) was compatible.

[mduell]

Yes, you can connect to Exchange with an iPhone via ActiveStink with a standard data plan. I have 3 coworkers doing it.

Note she'll loose the ability to sync personal calendars/contacts over USB. If you use ActiveSync on your iPhone, you have to sync your personal calendars/contacts via mobileMess.

[gradient]

Yep, the regular "personal" plan is fine. Half of my company's employees, including myself, are using iPhones with our exchange server, with only the most basic plans, without any problems at all. In fact, our IT tech was initially very surprised at how ridiculously painless they were to integrate and now owns an iPhone himself.

[QSilver]

I've been doing this since iPhoneOS 2.0 came out: iPhone unsupported by IT (even hostile towards it) and basic personal data plan.

It really is painless to set up. A couple of things to double-check: 1) For the domain + user name, be sure to use capital letters where required because it is case-sensitive. 2) You or IT may think that the serve address is merely 'owa.companyname.com' but you need '/exchange'; i.e., 'owa.companyname.com/exchange'

[Spheric Harlot]

The Enterprise Plan invariably involves destruction of the ship at the end of the movie.

Not a good idea.

[Dork.]

^ Hah!

I think it has to do with the security policies on the server, and how the server is configured. Perhaps this may help:

The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

An interesting piece of information from that link is that the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G do not support one of the types of encryption that the server may use, while the iPhone 3GS does. Earlier versions of the iPhone software lied about encryption support, but iPhone 3.1 tells the truth, and some servers may elect not to communicate with devices that do not support encryption. If this is the case ,your only options are to convince the IT admins to make an exception for you (not all that likely), or upgrade your iPhone.