You Want To Charge Me For WHAT?

pYou know Intellectual Property issues are often at the forefront of today’s news.#160; From movie companies trying to prevent people watching their copyrighted materials online to John McCain being so ignorant that he didn’t realize you can’t use artists’ songs (especially artists who oppose your views as it is) in campaign commercials bashing your opponents.#160; quot;Running of Emptyquot; indeed./p pBut however empty-headed today’s politicians may be, I have to conclude that companies like Bell Canada seem even more bereft of brains:/p blockquote pa href=”http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/09/25/bell-messing-with-the-gps-on-blackberry-phones/”img title=”bell_mobility_logo_250″ style=”margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px” height=”129″ alt=”Bell logo” src=”http://www.boygeniusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/bell_mobility_logo_250.jpg” width=”250″ align=”left” //a/p pIf rumors are true, then it looks like Bell in Canada is taking a page from the playbook of Verizon Wireless by crippling the GPS on select Blackberrys. Over the next few weeks, Bell may be increasing the GPS lock time (2-10 minutes) and resolution (1-2.5KM) of Third Party applications while maintaining the speed (10-15s) and accuracy (10-25m) of their own GPS Nav program. These changes are presumably meant to force lure customers into using Bell#8217;s crappy superior GPS Nav program instead of the built-in Blackberry Maps or the free Google Maps. You knew this was coming#8230; the GPS Nav service will cost $10/month or $3.50/day in addition to the $$ for a data plan. The phones to be affected will include the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, BlackBerry 8130 Pearl, and BlackBerry 8330 Curve … a href=”http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/09/25/bell-messing-with-the-gps-on-blackberry-phones/”read more here/a and a tip of the blog hat to Kelly Hodgkins for bringing this up./p /blockquote pPhone provider after phone provider have tried this game with varying degrees of success … and as an American taxpayer and long-time member of the GPS team they really get my goat when they do./p pMuch of the world loves to hate the US and especially my old alma mater, the US Department of Defense (DoD).#160; Hey, fine with me if that’s your outlook … anyone is free to love or hate whomever they wish, in my view./p pBut the US DoD invented, developed, built and makes available to the entire world the GPS at no charge.#160; For a company on foreign soil to take the free services that I, as an American taxpayer fund and then try to rob their own citizens by charging usage fees for something they do not even own strikes me as the height of greediness./p pFree use of the GPS is not only a principle upon which the system is founded, it illustrates a distinct lack of business acumen on the part of companies which seek to withhold what is not theirs.#160; The more customers are allowed and encouraged to use basic GPS functionality, the more it becomes a part of everyday life, the more applications are developed to use it and ultimately the more minutes and kilobytes of data flow over the network which translates to profit for the carrier.#160; /p pI urge all my Canadian brethren to pay attention to this issue.#160; Ignore it and the next thing you know Bell will try to charter you extra for using your phone in your home or your car or something else that Bell doesn’t own but thinks they can control./p