Verizon has revenue strategy that enable them to make huge profit from GPS related app and services and that’s why Verizon is blocking GPS for non Verizon app and services.

Verizon is the only carrier blocks Blackberry GPS by blocking 3rd party app’s access to PDE, that means assist data from bases station to initiate GPS calculation.

Verizon is holding customer hostage. Tell them to “OPEN GPS OR I’LL FIRE YOU” is the only way that will work.

The GPS also works on the 8830 World Edition.
But only if you’ve installed the 4.5 OS
I’m running 4.5.0.101 and it seems to be working great with Blackberry Maps.
Hopefully they’ll just open the GPS to third party programs and start getting their customers back. I’ve know several people that have moved to other networks because they disable hardware that was intended to be on the phone in the first place.

@BeyondtheTech…

Nav4All does NOT work unfortunately.

Has anyone tried it with Nav4All to see if it works with the VzW’s BlackBerry’s GPS? While it’s a free, no-frills turn-by-turn navigator over the internet, it got me out of a jam a couple of times.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a Verizon phone to test it with, so if you guys are willing to try it… http://www.nav4all.com

Rich Miner supposedly said this “Carriers behave like Lemmings” of the US carriers a couple of weeks ago in an event in Europe. I must say at first that I did not understand the metaphor. As I found out more about lemmings the animals and their strange behavior, I learnt of the root of the metaphor. Behaving like lemmings is a reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.

US carriers like Verizon and others are basically building walled gardens while at the same time are talking about openness. Verizon creates these priveleged API’s especially with respect to location.

If Verizon was really smart, they would open up all the location API’s and have their venture arm and invest in startup companies that leverage these API’s to bring out new services. This way they would gain from any technology developed by these startups and also gain financially from any sound exits.

With the emergence of NFC and other technologies in the new chipsets for phones newer ways to tap location will become available and tower based triangulation and GPS may become secondary.

Instead of gaining from the existing crop of technology startups, Carriers, but alas, they march like lemmings toward the cliff edge.

AMEN!

i hate carriers that gimp their handsets and verizon, your the most notorious!!!