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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.
A: AT&T
Yeah, I know: old joke. Used to be IBM instead of AT&T. But this story just proves it again! It's funny because it's true.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
And in the mean time, in the rest of the world, crippled phones DON'T EXIST. Because the phone you use is independent from the carrier. Welcome to open standards (GSM).
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
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.
Someone may be jumping the gun here. Wouldn't an AT&T/Telenav deal make more sense than an Apple/AT&T deal here?
I am going to hold off before taking a blogger's word that this move is iPhone related in the least. Telenav is now the exclusive 3rd party GPS app for the AT&T offering... follow the money.
Regards.
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.
I have to say that this seems normal behavior for any phone company the world over. I've never had the full features of any phone I've ever owned from many carriers in several countries.
It's what phone companies do. It's usually a question of finding the provider that sucks the least.
Although, in this case it seems a little back-to-front. I would guess that there may be users who end up with a Blackberry because they can't afford one, or their company prefers that system. I would seriously doubt there are many (non-corporation based) users who actually prefer a Blackberry now. Cost aside.
And, can I ask that maybe it's time to have a moratorium on iPhone stories. Yes, I think it's cool too -- but I am sick and tired reading of about it. The Firehose if clogged with iPhone stories. I want to read about something else now. Thanks.
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."
Comon, this isn't just AT&T. My *Verizon* 8830 phone has been "crippled" for about 2 weeks before the iPhone came out.
I called Verizon and inquired why my phone doesn't have the GPS turned on, and after getting to some 'data expert', I was told that the reason is Blackberry won't turn over some API or something to allow Verizon to enable this.
Now, I doubt that's really the reason, but again - this isn't some AT&T and/or Apple stunt.
...it sounds more like a Raspberry than a Blackberry to me!
:-(
Sorry
there are four bands. gsm 900 and gsm 1800 are used in europe, gsm 850 and gsm 1900 are used in americas (because 900 mhz and 1800 mhz were already used in usa that time).
quad bands gsm cell phones work everywhere.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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!
I'm never one for government regulation, but in view of the very existence of these companies in this space being based on regulation (frequency band reservation), I wonder if we need new antitrust legislation for this, a situation that the original writers of antitrust law could not have readily envisioned or comprehended? It's sort of an inverse product tying and is definitely intended to decrease competition (for example, no one can offer a competing navigation product on this device even though it clearly has the capability).
Or perhaps we need to retroactively apply the Google points on open device access to existing as well as new bands? It can be done by Congress under the ethical directive of protecting the public commons. From a business standpoint, is a legitimate intervention when the existing leasholders of those commons are mismanaging it against the interest of overall economic activity and the public good.
You are correct in that it isn't a pure GPS situation in most all phones, but it doesn't mean it isn't interacting with GPS satellite signals, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS. GPS takes more time and is more picky about quality signal from satellites. aGPS still has some degree of satellite signal being received at the phone, but either sends that data to the tower which uses it's more optimal GPS situation to provide a lock, or receives the extra data from the tower. In other words, it isn't necessarily any less precise, just potentially dependent on communication with a tower and less time needed from the point of being turned on to being able to pinpoint the location.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But this is old tech in fancy wrapping.
Don't fret, I'm sure it suffer the same fate that befell the iPod.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
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
people were MORE civilized prior to the advent of the cellphone.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The summary makes it sound like GPS is being removed from the phone, but the article says in first paragraph "...the US carrier has been successful in their attempts to lockdown the GPS functionality in their upcoming BlackBerry 8820 so that the only functioning 3rd party software will be TeleNav."
Not the same thing. "Only functioning 3rd party software", means you should be able to use TeleNav and any 1st party software (ie. whatever RIM has.)
Note: TMobile.com doesn't advertise (or even list as a feature) the GPS functionality on the BlackBerry 8800 that it is selling.
Of course there's no doubt this unbiased reporting from "BLACKBERRYCOOL" written by someone who admits to interviewing people while drunk (http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/05/09/004387/) is totally accurate.
I own one, my brother owns one, my mother has one, my father has one. My boss has one, my 2 best friends each have one. You can't go outside without seeing people using them. Its hardly a marketplace flop; initial sales projections were off, and they are selling quite nicely.
There. Fixed that for you.
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.
It seems as if none of the major carriers are willing to embrace the Blackberry line fully. Verizon, for instance, not only disabled the GPS, but also removed the OBEX Bluetooth profile (for one thing, you can't exchange phone books with in-car phone systems) and locked the SIM slot to work with Vodafone only - all measures I'm sure in some way in Verizon's corporate consciousness make sense to their bottom line. From the users' perspective, however, our bottom line is somewhat different. Some of us purchased the Blackberry 8830 precisely because we were told that it had a functional GPS. Some of the purchases were driven by the fact that this is much more of a business tool than a BREW-enabled plaything ("Get It Now"? Get real...) And some of us were convinced that this would truly be a world phone but came to find out that it's Vodafone's world or nothing (unless we want to cough up the balance of the full retail price for the phone, fill out some paperwork, and wait patiently for the SIM unlock code). One of my destinations, Costa Rica (where, by the way, I was told that the 8830 would work just fine), has a state-run monopoly whose name is not Vodafone. Unless I want to cough up another US$250 or so, I'm once again without phone while on international travel.
So, no, I don't really believe that AT&T crippled the Blackberry to make the iPhone look better. I believe they crippled the Blackberry because they're no more in touch with their users and their needs than any of the other major carriers and they're just after another buck and haven't figured out
So.... nearly everyone has one?
I have yet to see an iPhone in the wild. I work in IT with 20 geeks that have well paying jobs. I have a lot of gadget freaks in my family and there are many blackberries at family events. Yet somehow, none of them have iPhones.
BTW, my personal observations are just as representative as yours. That is to say, neither of our observation reflect the market penetration of the iPhone.
I agree, but the problem is not the market - the problem is the average US consumer is too brand-oriented, and will happily pay out (and upgrade) again and again without thinking what s/he is buying and without shopping around. These people allow monopolies to develop by not playing their part in the market. I used to think it's an excess of disposable income, but after seeing the iPhone phenomenon, I changed my mind.
Here in Europe there's no stigma about not buying brands. We'll buy what works well enough for the least money, which is why you'll see way fewer Apple products, not to mention the other "major" brands.
Of course we're still locked into MS like everyone else, but Eastern Europe is famous for it's pirate "industry" which provides competition, driving down prices. It's interesting to note that Windows is generally cheaper to buy anywhere in the world you can get a cheap copy.
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.
I own one, my brother owns one, my mother has one, my father has one. My boss has one, my 2 best friends each have one. You can't go outside without seeing people using them. Its hardly a marketplace flop; initial sales projections were off, and they are selling quite nicely.
I don't have one, niether of my brothers has one, my mother doesn't have one. My boss doesn't have one, none of my best friends have one. In fact, I have yet to see *anyone* using one while outside. However, I realize that this is strictly empirical data, so I'm not going to judge its sales success that way that you seem to have done.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com