News has been circulating about AT&T blocking NFC on the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and here at BlackBerryCool, we’ve noticed our Bold 9930 on Verizon also has NFC blocked. We reached out to RIM for comment and this is what they had to say:
“RIM believes that NFC is an exciting technology that will enable many new capabilities, and we are aligning with our partners in supporting the overall NFC ecosystem by investing in NFC in our products. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 series are the first to be NFC ready, and we are working closely with carrier partners on their roll out plans for NFC.”
It’s not clear why exactly carriers are blocking NFC on these devices but this isn’t the first time RIM has had to navigate carrier politics with the launch of a new product. App World is the obvious example that comes to mind. It seems as though carriers may have a variety of reasons why they would want to block NFC such as the fact that they may want to own the NFC/payment space themselves, and want to hold off on device implementation until their strategy is fully laid out. Most or all of the carriers will probably end up adopting NFC, as we’ve heard of mobile payments solutions such as Zoompass which started as a carrier initiative.
