BlackBerry OS7 (and older) was based on a design that made great sense when BlackBerrys were first designed and mobile data was very slow and very expensive. The way these operating systems work is to funnel all data traffic through a server sitting in one of RIM's data centres. So if an email or a web page is trying to send you data, it would first go to the BIS server, and that server would compress the data to make it transmit faster and cheaper, and would then forward it to your BlackBerry. The same for outgoing data from your BB, it would get comrpessed on your phone and then sent to the BIS to decompress and send on to the rest of the internet. This was great at the time, but required carriers to buy BIS services from RIM to support customers using BlackBerrys.
In more modern operating systems like iPhone and Android, no such "middle man" is used. BlackBerry also abandoned the BIS architecture starting with BlackBerry 10 (Z10, Q10, Z3, Z30, etc) and also connect directly to the internet for data.
Unfortunately, as most users on are on one of these more modern operating systems, and it's a cost to the carrier to provide BIS services, it's pretty clear why PM would choose not to provide those services. They've mentioned pretty clearly that you need BB10 or newer. 😞
Hopefully PM will provide you at least a partial refund, as you've paid for services you can't possibly use (without changing phones, of course).
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