AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone? 211
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."
sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me on this one
The Who called it first (Score:2)
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it, it's been some years now since consumers had anything like the power wielded by corporations. They pay the government and the government works for them. We, in turn, exist to give the corporations what they want, which is profits. Our desires don't enter into the equation.
The "free market", if it ever existed, is a deeply flawed concept. No matter how its done, the story always ends the same way. We are the consumables.
Faulty Consumers (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in Europe there's no stigma about not buying brands. We'll buy what works well enough
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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 car
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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
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Of course phone carriers are not free markets. But notice what those carriers start to cry when people ask for some assurance that access will remain open to these strategic resources: "We don't need Net Neutrality laws because The Free Market will sort out all the problems.
We're supposed to trus
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"The new at&t feels alot like the old AT&T."
They're smaller, but bolder.
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meet the new AT&T, the old SBC.
-nB
SBC's employees refer to the company as Sodomized By Cowboys.
Q: What do you get when you cross Apple and AT& (Score:3, Funny)
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
Q:What do you get when you cross NCR and AT&T? (Score:2)
USA - rest of world (Score:5, Informative)
Re:USA - rest of world (Score:4, Funny)
Re:USA - rest of world (Score:4, Insightful)
um-- a bit backwords (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:USA - rest of world (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is if you buy your own phone and THEN get the SIM card from the carrier.
Make the maths: i bet even there the total cost of the 1 or 2 years subscription you're locked into if you get a phone from the carrier is more than the price of a new phone.
As an added benefict, subscriptions for SIM Only users (those that bring their own phone) are usually cheaper for the same number of minutes/texts/whatever than the equivalent subscriptions with phone.
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I purchased an unlocked RIZR in December 06 and brought it to a T-Mobile store. They gladly ran the FCC number port on the Verizon number and acti
Re:USA - rest of world (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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So is $700 the subsidized price of the iPhone. If so, ouch. If not, then why is AT&T/Apple crippling a full priced device? Maybe people should speak with their wallets and not buy it. I know I have. But that wasn't because it is locked. They've just priced it out of my range.
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On a more serious note, the BB is a business product. Nearly all businesses buy the phones unlocked. They can get bulk rates, discounts, etc and the entire "stay in contract to get the phone subsidised" malarkey no longer makes sense.
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False.
Locked, subsidized, and crippled phones exist on a number of carriers in Europe and Asia. I've seen them in England, France, Belgium, Austria, and Japan.
You sound like someone who's been drinking too much Anti-U.S. Kool-Aid and has never shopped around for mobile phone service outside the United States.
And for the record, I h
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And for the record, I have an UNLOCKED GSM phone that I use on T-Mobile here in the United States. You don't have to buy a locked phone. Just just have to be dumb to do it.
Depends, if you're buying one without a contract, then yes that is stupid. If you are taking the subsidized phone, then it really depends upon how much it costs, and how much the ability to bring it over to another carrier is worth it to you.
I personally have no problem with the idea of a phone locked to the carrier that subsidized it. I just wish they could unlock it after the contract period was over.
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Tell that to vodafone UK who removed the VOIP from all recent nokias.
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As much as I hate the US system, you still miss the main point about it: a single US carrier is probably bigger (more money), than every UK carrier combined. It's all about the money, and in this case, the US consumer is the loser. (Sound familiar, cough, Microsoft, cough). However, successfully large monopolistic
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quad bands gsm cell phones work everywhere.
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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 Afr
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Their latest data roaming rate is actually 12 Eu per day for up to 50 MB on partner networks if you are on a dedicated data product. If you use data a lot I suggest you take on that offer, get the card or USB modem coming with it and forget about using data on your normal phone. It comes with 3G monthly within the UK as well for 25 quid. There as similar offers from other vodafone franchises.
The card is probably a better choice (the USB modem is quirky). It is a Huawey (should be probably called HuyHuy as
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That's on your home network, not roaming.
You're right though, T-Mobile USA do offer a better international data roaming rate, had you been roaming in the UK, or any other country bar Canada, you'd have been charged $15.36 per MB + tax, s
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Improved services attract consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
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-
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but... (Score:2)
There is indeed competition in some places and in others they just scare you from leaving with their high service termination fees.
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Very true,--- until the 2 year contract is up. Consumers have a memory of the problems and pains they have with a carrier. Churn is very real.
2 year contracts may only slow it down to the next contract renewal. Better service would reduce churn.
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I do not know if this is the case here, but the market goes that way. Why bother offering something when your competition doesn't offer it either? More importantly, when all the customer cares about is that he pays 0.01 cent less with you than with your competing company.
Look at the ads from the various cell providers. Does anyone mention his services? Or is all they push their "low" price?
Generally, you'll s
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Actually I do have a choice. In the world of instant gratification many see the glass as half full, ie there are features that don't work.
I look at the package offered, and then move on.
Case in point. I bought a cell phone with the understanding that it is just a phone. We deliberately had the carrier eliminate all web access. They said "text messaging won't work". I said "Good, neither does the company
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Still, none of them offers a full service portfolio. I was quite amazed when I was in the US to see what my cell could do if it's allowed to. Push to talk? Coupling cell and landline? Unheard of in Europe. Similar things apply to the contracts. Free text messages and/or free minutes with your service fee? Impossible. Ok, this is slowly changing, but for the longest time, none of t
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I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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If Apple is actually pressuring a retailer to cripple a competitor's product, they could end up in serious hot water legally.
But it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't benefit Apple and it doesn't b
how retarted. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Your magellan
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Not precisely... (Score:4, Informative)
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If Apple offered GPS in their phone as crappy as what appears to be the standard, they'd be raked over the coals for it.
Is this in any way surprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Is this in any way surprising? (Score:4, Informative)
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You're absolutely right. Look at how Vodaphone, O2, NTT, KDDI, and other companies have been brought to their knees by crippling and locking their phones.
Oh, wait. They haven't.
I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. GS
Sure, that's exactly it. Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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So, I have an E61 and am using it with T-Mobile (just swapped my SIM
Verizon too! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The sales people swarmed on me saying that the reason they didn't have it is because Apple wanted them to do this and that; when the real issue was that Verizon is in the market to sell music at twice the price of iTunes. They didn't want this thing on their network because it would cut their music profits in half. Even more, it let you get video from YouTube and
No cellphone carrier understands BB customers (Score:3, Interesting)
Blackberry won't turn over some API or something to allow Verizon to enable this.
That's about the fourth different reason I've heard as to why the GPS is disabled in the 8830, but the first to point the finger at RIM. First, I was told by someone at Verizon that only the 911 service used the GPS. Well, I had to explain to the customer service rep that the technology she was referencing was A-GPS [wikipedia.org], not true GPS like the Verizon marketing literature and the RIM website stated is in the 8830. The second person I spoke with a few days later swore that the GPS worked. The third person, b
Insult to their customers' common sense?.... (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry
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What you have here .. (Score:2)
Not the first time our communications carriers have done that, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
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The New Antitrust? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
iPhone is the benchmark? (Score:2)
Of course this ignores the fact that the phones are targeted to different people. The Blackberry is the corporate phone that
Summary is Wrong - RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Even more great behavior from a cell phone company (Score:2)
You see, they aren't going to market this as "BlackBerry 8820, GPS crippled edition", they're going to sell it as an 8820.
And then charge you $10 per month to use the GPS.
Just like every other cell phone carrier in the USA has ripped out some features in most of their phones so they can sell some fucking "monthly service" that is vastly inferior to what is built into an uncrippled ph
Not just the blackberry (Score:2)
Poppycock (Score:2, Insightful)
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1: Gross price does not equal profit. If AT&T has two plans, one $40/mo and one $100/mo, but their profits are $10/mo and $1/mo respectively, they'll push you to the first plan. Why? Because that's where their profit is.
2: AT&T is not a monopoly. Microsoft is restrained from doing certain bundling actions with Windows, because they DO have a monopoly on Windows. AT&T & Apple do not have a monopoly on cell phone service, so if they wanted to they could requi
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What, do you think that AT&T has no control over their own profit margins? If they want more of a profit margin on the Blackberry plan, all they need to do is increase the price. If they increase the price too much, then people will go to the other plan without any need to "push" the
WTH. (Score:2)
Fancy pants reporting there!
No, that's not it. (Score:2)
We've just received word from one of our friends inside AT&T that 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.
TeleNav. That would be the mapping service that AT&T will allow, rather than one of the third party ones that one can get for free or at minimal cost, often using Google Maps.
I wonder if there is a reason AT&T might prefer TeleNav?
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Tom
a post about a blog about a rumor about an unknown (Score:2)
Trustful source? (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
RTFA (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
There. Fixed that for you.
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Re:iPhone is old tech (Score:5, Funny)
But this is old tech in fancy wrapping.
Don't fret, I'm sure it suffer the same fate that befell the iPod.
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It's also totally fake.
There are a lot of complaints you could make about the iPhone, but the screen breaking or scratching isn't in that list.
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Considering how few reports I've heard of the screen actually breaking though, I'd say it is a rare occurrence. Also, I remember that AT&T wasn't insuring several other phones when they first came out, so the screen probably had little to do with that.
Considering most iPhone owners are supposedly "very happy" (to quote headlines) I would say that it is somewhat uncommon that any are, as you say "f#cked", by a broken screen.
It is glass, though. Common sense care does apply
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No 3rd party application availability?
What rock have you been under? 3rd party apps aren't a problem, doesn't even take a l33t haxx0r to install them. I've got apache webserver and a wiki running on mine, a Nintendo emulator (w00t! Haven't played Galaxians in years!), full shell access with ssh, and on and on.
I know it was delayed for long, and it sure looks like it. One year ago this phones feature set might have been more excusable.
OK sure, whatever. I went from a Palm Treo to the iPhone. Most of what the iphone does, the Palm does too. But without exception, the UI on the palm is clunky compared to how the iPhone does it. If you just want to check off
Re:Has Anyone Even Seen An iPhone? (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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- IRC
- SSH
- MMS
- Blackberry Messenger (this one is so key)
- integration with Exchange or Zimbra
- A filesystem that lets you save things, like pictures and audio
- a rich e-mail client that lets you send things from said filesystem
- custom backgrounds that display at times other than when the phone is locked
- custom ringtones
- a keyboard with tactile feedback
- a keyboard with an ea easily accessibly period (.)
- COPY A
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Steve's reach is incredible. I heard that he's also responsible for Britain's plans to pull it's troops out of Iraq because he wants to maximise the market for the XMas 1997 UK iPhone launch. But there's more: could rumours of the forthcoming iHouse and the problems with the US sub-prime mortgage market completely coincidental? Was th
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As for the discussion at hand, at least for me (and I assume hundreds of thousands of others), the BlackBerry was never an option for me. I don't want to be THAT guy walking around with his 3 pound belt-brick, trying to