Rumor: AT&T Crippling GPS In BlackBerry 8820

So the BlackBerry 8820 is soon to be released on AT&T and someone that is supposedly and insider has outed the notion that the integrated GPS in the 8820 may be crippled by a monthly service fee in order to keep iPhone sales up. I personally think this is ludicrous.

There are several reasons for buying an iPhone, the music capabilities the highly innovative touchscreen, the simple fashion statement it makes. What I cannot come up with is one reason where the iPhone and any BlackBerry would ever compete for customers. Sure the BlackBerry has a lot of great features, features that maximize it's usefulness for its intended audience, but I cannot think of one that would cause someone to walk into an AT&T store with the intention of purchasing and iPhone and suddenly be swayed to buy a BlackBerry.

I guess the deal is that AT&T is going to tie the GPS in the 8820 to TeleNav and charge customers $9.99/month to use it. Now I don't know if this means what some have been implicating, who knows, maybe the BlackBerry doesn't come with software to utilize the GPS technology inside it and the $9.99 fee is really only a charge from TeleNav and AT&T providing that software. Regardless, if AT&T is pulling such hijinks just to push sales of a $600 iPhone then I suspect a large number of their customers to be moving over to Sprint, not only to they have better data network coverage, but they are working on a WiMax network.

AT&T crippling GPS in BlackBerry 8820? [via boygeniusreport]