Sunday, August 1, 2010

Confused UAE residents may find their "Blackberry or iPhone?" debate just got easier

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority says it will suspend Blackberry messaging, emailing and browsing service by October 11 if the company does not make the information contained in what people communicate available. The complaint now is that it's shipped away. It's a matter of "national security". Other Gulf countries appear to be moving in the same direction. Etisalat and du, the country's two main service providers, say they will come up with alternative services (ones where all the info stays in the country) in the coming days. Blackberry, over to you...


UPDATE: More context here...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Reasoning is reasonable-> In current form, certain Blackberry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns for the UAE.

JP said...

They should probably record and filter every phone conversation as well, just to play it safe.
And e-mails and written letters.

Ring, Ring!
Hi China? Hey, how do you guys do it so well?

mezba said...

I think Etisalat just redefined the meaning of the word stupid. You think they can`t get any more stupid and they surpass your expectations.

Basically they wanted RIM to allow them snoop and RIM told them to go F*** themselves... that`s what happened!

Anonymous said...

Mezba, i think you redefined the word stupid. If you knew anything about what was going on, you would know that its not Etisalat who chose this act, but the TRA. Also, you would know that the TRA is simply requesting access to the same features and services RIM made available to countries like the USA, China and (soon) India.

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