14 DAY TRIAL // The telecommunications authority in Saudi Arabia has instructed the country's mobile operators to suspend BlackBerry services by Friday due to RIM's inability to provide government agencies with access to its customers' data. A similar decision was announced in the United Arab Emirates last week and Kuwait is also considering the same course of action.
BlackBerry are amongst the most popular smartphones, with an estimated global market share of around 20%. Because their design is clearly focused on messaging features and data security, the devices are highly appreciated by business consumers.
The BlackBerry Internet Service, which has users sending data directly to servers operated in Canada by Research In Motion (RIM), the company producing the smartphone, is available in over 90 countries world-wide. Customers can use this service to send email, do social networking or send free messages through the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
Gulf News reports that Saudi Arabia's Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) only intends to ban the BBM application. However, IDG News cites an anonymous source within CITC, according to whom, email service will also be blocked if RIM doesn't reach an agreement with operators in the country to provide access to it's customers' encrypted data.
Meanwhile, the Canadian company claims that it cannot comply with such requests because the data encryption/decryption is performed at device level and not on its servers. It also dismisses any rumors that it is treating governments differently. "Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded," a spokesperson said yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There are currently around 750,000 BlackBerry subscribers in Saudi Arabia. Even if we add the 500,000 users from the United Arab Emirates where BlackBerry service will be suspended in October, that's still only a small dent in RIM's customer base of over 40 million.
However, if more governments adopt similar stances, it could quickly become a problem. According to Gulf News, Kuwait is already considering a BlackBerry service ban, while India is still trying to reach common ground with RIM on the issue.
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