So What Ever Happened to GPS On Verizon’s 8830?
I have been hearing many complaints from Verizon subscribers on how GPS is crippled on their new 8830’s. People have been discussing it on the forums for a few months now and today it was just covered by Dave in his US News Blog. This is really frustrating since it seems that AT&T will be going down the same road with the new 8820 by disabling GPS. I guess carriers feel they need to make money off everything. This happened with Verizon and Bluetooth and now it seems like the trend is only growing stronger.
On a side note, Sprint’s 8830 does have GPS enabled for free and they were one of the first companies to charge for TeleNav. Maybe we can take this as a hint that forcing customers to use TeleNav for GPS did not work. This trend suggests that even if RIM creates the ultimate BlackBerry, if carriers aren’t making money off the extra features they wont care. This is the same reason that we still can’t get the AOL and MSN messenger clients on our BlackBerry’s even though the software already exists.
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February 4th, 2008 17:20
We need a class action suit against verizon. Who actuall owns the phone , verizon or the consumer. What right do they have to disable anything. If they own the phone , why do I have to buy it? I didn’t sign a lease agreement , I had to pay for it. Verizon has been beeting us up for years. They have us by the balls because they have the best coverage. What about those minutes we don’t use each month? Why shouldn’t we be reimbursed for them. They shouls have to reimburse us for all those unused minutes we have lost since we became customers. I think the FCC need to seriously look into Verizons operations. Bring on the class action suit. Lets go legal beagles, the should be a fortune to be made here.
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February 5th, 2008 09:56
They really have been screwing BB users for ages. I really hope they really have changed heart recently because it just does not make sense for them to lock out features that dont cost them a dime. AT&T got it right with telenav making it optional. Dont get me wront AT&T is no saint but they do understand that locking down a device will just annoy the customer. Especially when other carriers have the same device with the features unlocked…
July 10th, 2008 07:57
For anyone interested there IS a class action suit filed in US District Court. Unfortunately the first action isn’t until some mandatory pre settlement conference not until January 2009.
September 25th, 2008 12:50
Here is the law President Regan signed into law that all GPS will be free for all to use. How/ why is verizon making people pay for a service when everyone in the USA pays for it with federal taxes? How is it that verizons gps works through there system when we have over 24 sattilites that do the job already?
Hope verizon can answer these questions honestly. Enjoy the reading
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pubs/gps/white.htm