That is a completely different subject. Getting a position from the built-in GPS has nothing to do with Internet access. Internet access is simply used (normally) to download map data, once the phone knows what its position is. That way you don't have to have all the map data stored on the phone.

So, nobody seems to object to my line of discussion...

Does anybody have any clue how Verizon disables the GPS, then re-enables it to use VZNavigator?

Has anybody tried cloning, say, a Sprint phone into a Verizon phone, but preserving the original ESN and PIN, to see if that gets the GPS to work?

It seems like an obvious train of thought to speculate that RIM actually made these phones specifically for Verizon with some kind of different hardware in them than the same Sprint phone, that allows VZW to disable the GPS. BUT, even if that were true, it's still the case that a piece of software (VZNav) is able to interface with the hardware and make the GPS work. In which case, it should be possible to write 3rd party software to do the same thing.

Does anybody here have any experience with an SDK for writing apps like VZNav? Does it include a simulation environment that lets you test apps within your dev environment?

Does the dev environment behave the same as the phone when you try to access the GPS programmatically?

Can you decompile the VZNav code to try and see what it does to enable the GPS? I would guess it uses some kind of public-private key deal to get an unlock code OTA from a VZW server.

Is there a way to download the built-in firmware, so that it could be decompiled/disassembled to possibly find the decryption key it's using when VZNav talks to it?

Does anybody have any insight at all into this?