IIRC BIS is to check a 3rd party email account and deliver it to your handheld, if you just want to use your [email protected] email you don't have to set BIS up.

BlackBerry’s BIS email servers have apparently shit the bed, big time: users across the country (and in Canada too!) are reporting that while internet services in general work, email has been out all ...

The outage appears to be limited to RIM's consumer-oriented BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), which lets BlackBerry users surf the Web and get realtime access to their POP3/IMAP/Outlook Web Access ...