I saw the above add when I was having a look at The Times this morning. Quite apart from the fact that the advert looks a little amateur, it did prompt me to wonder how people using Oman Air have been getting on with using their mobile handsets in-flight.

I can think of nothing worse than being sat next to a chap nattering away in a stupidly loud voice for up to 8 hours at a time. However I’ve often wanted to be able to work away on the BlackBerry (and actually have the emails SEND there-and-then) or, of course, us my laptop online when in the air.

Have any readers been flying Oman Air recently? What was it like?

After my post yesterday about the Baltimore Police force’s introduction of 2,080 networked BlackBerries all running InterAct’s PocketCop application, quite a few readers including David Doherty contacted me to tell me about this simply ridiculous story in the Irish Examiner: Garda body issues legal threat over phone bill.

Here’s the background: A police officer (or Garda, as they’re known in Ireland) who was giving chase to two suspects found himself cornered by them. Indeed, the suspects decided to beat the poor chap up and throw him down an embankment. Not before they got stuck into his car tyres and stamped/smashed his 250 Samsung handset.

Luckily the chap wasn’t serious injured. But, of course, his Samsung was a write off.

No matter.

You’d expect the Garda authorities to sort him out with a refund or replacement or something like that.

But no.

It seems the Samsung handset was an unofficial device. Since it was the officer’s own personal handset, the authorities have stuck their hands across their chests and refused to pay for compensation.

The handset is required, you see, because of the rather rubbish (“spotty”) radio system that requires officers to often use their own handsets to communicate with colleagues and their base.

Senior Garda management aren’t listening. Their view, it seems, is that since the device was personal property — and despite it being deliberately smashed — it’s the officer’s problem for carrying a mobile phone.

I think it’s absolutely ridiculous and I can see why the Garda union (“GRA)” is going nuts with annoyance.

How long before the Garda management decides to take a leaf out of the Baltimore Police Force’s book and deploy an efficient information distribution and dissemination system such as PocketCop for BlackBerry to each police officer? Years. Decades. Don’t hold your breath.

And where the is Samsung when a little bit of public relations finesse could be useful here?

If you’re looking to deploy BlackBerry in your organisation, whether it’s for 2 people or 2,000, chances are you’d be far better speaking to a specialist like Scancom than popping down to your local Vodafone store.

I bumped into Chen Kotecha of Scancom UK yesterday and asked if he could give me an overview of the company’s services, particularly from the perspective of buying, deploying and supporting BlackBerry services for enterprise.

Here’s the video:

If you’re on the hunt for assistance deploying BlackBerry, do give Chen and his team a call.