Just to add my rant too.
I am sure that the US is the same as the UK, in that Mobile (Cellphone) signals do not cover the whole country. I live in a remote part of the UK where GPRS signals do not reach until I am about 6 miles from home. Without Stand alone on my BB8800 I have to stop and program the mapping in when I have a signal. And as I also travel in remote locations there are times when the map will not refresh due to loss of signal.
What a short sighted approach. I think that, like some of you, the GPS providers have located a rich vein of income generation, and the future of the one-off purchase of maps is going to be reduced.
I reckon that they will be putting GPRS receivers in their Handheld GPS soon too.

Please, Garmin, Tom-Tom, Navman, etc lets have some support for the Blackberry