Posts Tagged ‘gps lock’

The Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed by the United States Department of Defence and is now managed by the US Air Force and is readily available for anyone to use free of charge. Yes, free of charge. As a matter of fact, just about anyone could buy a GPS receiver and build a primitive navigation system to tell them where they are in the world (especially with cool services such as Google Maps that have an API). Did you know, for example, that when you buy a handheld GPS navigation system that you don’t have to pay a monthly/yearly fee to continue to make use of the Global Positioning System that the US Air Force so kindly maintains? Interesting indeed.

I have a Blackberry Curve from Telus that conveniently comes with a GPS chip that can be enabled with extra software. In other words, there is a lock of sorts on the use of GPS until you get Telus to unlock the service for you (based on my understanding). Somewhat dissapointing since the last Blackberry device that I owned did not have such a lock (the World Edition). After doing a quick search on the topic, it seems that people have discovered some ways around this unfair lock [keeping in mind that iPhones come with GPS  navigation out of the box]:  http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=8300&message.id=2119