BlackBerry services to be suspended in the UAE starting October 11th
Apparently unable to work out a solution to get BlackBerry devices “compliant” with the UAE, the country has stated that it will disable BlackBerry services on October 11th. The Director of the Telecommunication Regulation Authority had this to say:
“With no solution available and in the public interest, in order to affect resolution of this issue, as of October 11, 2010, Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry Email and Blackberry Web-browsing services will be suspended until an acceptable solution can be developed and applied.”
All United Arab Emirate carriers are set to comply with the decision. There is also no timetable for a “compliant solution” to be integrated. We’d love to be on the internal RIM email chain this morning…
Thanks, to everyone who sent this over!
Update: We have heard Saudi Arabia is also blocking BlackBerry data services, but unlike the UAE, it is being suspended as of today. Can anyone confirm?
Update 2: Saudi Arabia has started blocking BlackBerry Messenger at this time, but not email, web browsing, or other data services.
Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller is the founder of Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR. What began as a column on popular gadget blog Engadget quickly grew into one of the site’s biggest draws, and Jonathan soon detached the wildly popular column to create what has since become the biggest mobile news destination in the world.
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