14 DAY TRIAL // The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in the United Arab Emirates announced that BlackBerry services are now compliant with the country's national security legislation and a ban is no longer warranted.
Back in July, the authority took issue with how some BlackBerry data services operate, in particular the instant messaging and email ones.
TRA explained that because data is immediately sent outside of the country in a form that cannot be intercepted, the services are a threat to national security.
As a result, all UAE mobile service operators were officially instructed to suspend BlackBerry data services beginning October 11, 2010, until a solution is found.
Research In Motion (RIM) has been working since then to address the UAE government's concerns and apparently it succeeded.
"The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has confirmed that Blackberry services are now compliant with the UAE’s telecommunications regulatory framework.
"Therefore, the TRA has confirmed today that all Blackberry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010. "The TRA would like to acknowledge the positive engagement and collaboration of Research In Motion (RIM) in reaching this regulatory compliant outcome," the authority announced today.
No details have been released regarding how the compliance was actually reached and so far both parties have declined to answer questions on the matter.
RIM has repeatedly stated in the past that it will not compromise the security of its customers and that it cannot decrypt corporate emails, since it doesn't have the keys.
The email encryption/decryption is handled by the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) instances ran by every company and RIM's infrastructure only carries the data along.
Countries like India or Saudi Arabia have also expressed similar concerns regarding the smarphone's security model. Both of them have threatened to ban the data services.