Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone?
0xdeadbeef writes "BlackBerryCool got a tip that not only was AT&T removing GPS functionality from their version of the BlackBerry 8820, they're doing it so it won't show up the iPhone. While carriers crippling phones to stop them from competing with pay-per-use services is nothing new, this might be the first time they've done it to make their other products seem less diminished."
The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.
Many carriers think they are a monopoly and don't want to have their low end rob the profit from the high end.
b lackberry-carrier-retailers-who-gets-it-and/
They are forgetting something. There is competition. They should strive to make all of their products and services more valuable to consumers.
Here is what we have so far..
1 An i-phone which is cool who's bill comes in a box shipped by UPS Oh and by the way is has a monopoly carrier.
2 A Blackberry. They are obtainable from several carriers, but AT&T cripples them worse than other carriers.
3 A Blackberry on another carrier.
4.. The rest of the market
If you avoid #1 due to the carrier issues and monster bills, you are now likely to avoid #2 for both the service and carrier reputation. Just what were they thinking? They don't hold a monopoly on Blackberries.
http://www.bbhub.com/2006/09/18/rating-the-major-
The truth shall set you free!
I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this. Even though I wouldn't think that the iPhone and the Blackberry compete directly, at least prior to this decision AT&T sold one popular device with GPS functionality. Why they would change so that they now sell no devices (at the iPhone/Blackberry level) with GPS capabilities?
I could understand if Apple wanted this to happen... but how does this help AT&T? AT&T doesn't/shouldn't care if people are buying Blackberries over iPhones on the basis of GPS, so long as the Blackberry comes from AT&T. If they believed that GPS was the tipping point, those customers are now buying nothing from AT&T.
Doesn't seem so smart to me.
The GPS in every cellphone I have ever tried was incredibly crappy anyways. The Blackberry GPs's dont get a fix unless you carefully hold them up in the air in an open field, Nextel GPS phones also suck horribly. The iPhone dies not have a GPS for two very good reasons. 1. it's a metal casing phone. 2. GPS modules in phones simply do not work so they left it out. The cheapie Magellan Gold GPS I got for $89.00 on ebay kicks the crud out of every single GPS enabled phone I have ever seen. and yes I have seen lots of them. They can not get a GPS fix from inside your pocket or on your hip, they never work in newer cars as the glare film and other tratements make the windshield electrically conductive so it blocks RF signals.
I am sure they are disabling the GPS simply because the GPS sucks. The is the same company that 3 years ago refused to allow phones on it's network that did not have GPS's in them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.
It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.
So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.
Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The rest of the world uses 900 and 1800MHz for GSM. The US uses two different frequencies, 850 and 1900.
Most phones sold in the Europe are tri band or quad band these days, covering all the frequencies needed to roam internationally. I've happily been using various UK phones in the US since 2002, and roaming in Europe and Africa man times before then.
You are right though, that just because you have a compatible phone, networks can still play unfair. Even your home network when you see roaming costs, like Vodafone UK charging $20/Mb for roaming data!
It isn't pretty in all of the rest of the world either. In latin america, all phones are locked to the carrier that provides them. While they don't cripple the phones as much as verizon (my v3 came with all features enabled), we can't choose carriers. GSM doesn't mean that the phone is free from carrier lockdown.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
I thought it was AT&T hindering the device not apple, so why do they need to be less paranoid?
Actually this all seems silly to me. Silly if true, I should say. I bought an iphone because I liked it, some other phone having gps isn't going to make me like it less.
Posted from my iPhone
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Screw the furniture. Threaten not to use their products, and you've got their attention. Recall, there had been civilization prior to the advent of the cell phone...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I've never heard of anyone I know owning one.
I've never heard of anyone I know even talking about buying one.
I've never seen anyone walking around with one.
The sales figures for the phone so far are embarrassingly low even for a product that you would have thought hundreds of thousands of Mac fans with huge amounts of disposable income would have bought without hesitation.
I can't imagine AT&T doing anything like this for a marketplace flop like the iPhone.
people were MORE civilized prior to the advent of the cellphone.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is obvious nonsense. AT&T has no financial incentive to steer people away from BlackBerries (quite the opposite, in fact, BlackBerry service plans are more expensive than the standard iPhone plans), and if an agreement with Apple is forcing them to do it, then that agreement would likely be illegal and probably doesn't exist.
I live in America. I have an uncrippled phone, because I opted to buy my own. I could either buy an uncrippled phone, or let the telco subsidize my purchase, but they want to cripple the phone so I would end up paying more money in the long term. Ultimately, I decided that to replace my uncrippled phone with one crippled in ways I didn't care about, but that was superior in other ways.
Let's be clear, you can bitch about the loss of rights companies force on you. Just be prepared to pay full-price for those things. Alternatively, you can buy a phone where they cripple the bluetooth, just use USB to move things, and say, "Hey, bluetooth isn't worth $150 to me to buy an uncrippled version."
It's actually more freedom in the US.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
As a person who uses Apple products... I'd gladly purchase a non-Apple product if I could find one which was worth my money. I've tried buying other brands, non-brands, etc. and always end up with buyer's remorse... Apple just makes good products.
Regarding TFA... AT&T is free to do what they want with their products, though I don't understand why they'd choose this option. iPhone is a consumer product, Blackberry is a Business User product. They are targeted at two separate and distinct markets. Who cares if they have different features, it's expected.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
But look at how readily Apple, now experiencing some measure of success, can ignore the desires of their own customers. Do you know how many consumers want to buy OSX to run on their own custom-built hardware?
How about how many iPod users want to be able to listen to FLAC files, or be able to use their iPods the way that they want them without violating the end user license. Speaking of end-user licenses, those are some of the best examples of the way the free market has betrayed consumers. Now, we buy a product and we have to sign a quasi-legal document that tells us how we are allowed to use the product, which we NOW OWN.
I'm sorry, fans. Apple make some very cool products, but as a corporation they are just as uncaring about what their customers want as any HMO or oil company. We're supposed to buy the products they want us to buy instead of the ones we want to buy, and we're supposed to be grateful.
It really is the free market itself that failed. No matter how you shake it, the free market is always going to coalesce around powerful entities, who will increase their power and limit our choices. All free markets are doomed to end in commercial authoritarianism, with a few rich people and lots and lots of sub-middle class workers. That's exactly what's happening now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We're supposed to trust them to behave the laws of free markets when it suits them, but when we point out that they're not serving us as consumers, we hear your nonsense about how they aren't really bound by the laws of free markets because they aren't really corporations, but "industrial organizations".
A half-literate sixth grader can see that's all so much bullshit, but the free market radicals that write the economics articles and show up on television telling us that the current economy is "booming" don't have a clue.
We are the consumables, and it's only getting worse. There have been times in our nation's past when we've taken big business to the woodshed and taught them some lessons. My great grandfather was one of the iron-headed union guys that helped workers organize to a point where they could even out the field a bit, and he had the scars across his skull to prove it. It's long past overdue for us to do it again. Ronald Reagan started the most recent spate of hatred of the working class in America, and George Bush has put in the most recent knives. It'll take a Democratic administration or two before we get back to anything like balance, but it will happen.
Remember, it's the decades that there was a balance and mutual respect between big business and labor when our economy was doing the best. Nowadays, we hear about what a great economy we have, but it's really only good if you're a member of the owner class. If you're a worker, you have been repeatedly and brutally violated over the last 6 years.
You are welcome on my lawn.