I use a blackberry. They are quite popular for many because blackberry IMs are free and you can get a blackberry on contract for about £10 per month I am told.

However they offer three types of message.

First, you can use blackberry IMs which I don't.
Second you can use them to harvest your emails from your POP3 server - and this is so even though old blackberries like mine are G2 devices not G3.
Third you can send txts.


So I imagine that retrieving my email and sending it would depend on being able to reach a mobile phone mast - unaffected by power in my house but does depend on the masts being still standing and still powered. And close.

Then the signal goes to (I assume) internet to be received at the url of the POP3 server.

So the answer may be "maybe".


Many years ago there used to be a protocol to access the web through email only gateways. I did use it but will have to mull to remember what it was called.