I had the pleasure of having lunch with Patrick Kimball of Verizon yesterday to discuss the state of the world according to Verizon. It was a pleasant meeting as always and I enjoy visiting with Patrick whenever I can. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, a lot of which I can’t share but some significant topics which I can.
You may recall the BlackBerry 8830 issue I have mentioned before where Verizon disabled the integrated GPS that RIM put in the device. Patrick responded to that initial lament but that didn’t go very far to ease the grief that 8830 owners feel without their GPS. I addressed this with Patrick and while I don’t agree totally with Verizon’s stance I do understand it a bit better.
Verizon makes contracts with OEMs to deliver handsets for branding on their network and the 8830 was no exceptoin. Verizon stipulated a number of performance, security and privacy requirements for the 8830 and RIM did not deliver as specified. Because of this Verizon released the phone with the GPS totally disabled, and believe me they do understand consumer’s (and enterprise’s) frustration. For this reason Verizon will be issuing a firmware upgrade in the next few months that will enable the GPS to work not only with their own VZNavigator service but with some third party programs as well.
Repeat after me, Verizon will be issuing a firmware upgrade in the next few months that will enable the GPS to work not only with their own VZNavigator service but with some third party programs as well. This is great news for me and all the other 8830 owners out there and I appreciate Patrick sharing that with us.
Other exciting news from Verizon, the entire national EV-DO network is now Rev A upgraded. This is very cool but even more exciting is that by this time next year the entire southern region (a huge area) will be EV-DO covered. Anywhere you can make a call on the Verizon network will also have EV-DO coverage. Now that’s impressive and yes, I can hear you now.
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