And so the BlackBerry/UAE saga continues. First we posted in July that United Arab Emirate's officials were considering 'monitoring or restricting' BlackBerry devices due to RIM's use of overseas data encryption.
The UAE then warned that it was to ban email and internet usage on BlackBerry devices and we were all sat waiting patiently for the UAE to stamp all over human rights and go all totalitarian on the harmless little web surfers and email-junkies.
Thankfully though, for RIM's bank balance and the BlackBerry users of the UAE, it seems there has been a reprieve. Services were due to be cut on Monday but so far, everything is still up and running.
And just in case you think the guy who presses the 'cut service' button has slept in;
the local Telecommunications Regulatory Authority have said: “All BlackBerry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur.”
It seems RIM have done some bargaining to keep their half a million UAE handset users connected. The TRA said the decision had been taken as a result of “the positive engagement and collaboration of RIM in reaching this regulatory compliant outcome”.
But no one quite knows what RIM have done to calm down the Telecomms people.
Well it worked, and that's the main thing.
Source: Guardian