It was on August 1st, 2010 the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in the UAE issued a statement saying that Blackberry services would be banned in the country on October 11. This was an unexpected move from the TRA’s side. They claimed that Blackberry devices’ system of sending and receiving information was not safe for the country, since all that data goes offshore to RIM’s servers. Messenger, email and web browsing were all on the list, and around 500,000 users here were looking at losing them.
Saudi Arabia went through its own version of this days later. The CITC there asked the three operators to block Blackberry services, Messenger included, by Friday August 6. Messenger did go dark for a few hours and came back, and on August 10 the CITC said Messenger could continue while it sorted out the rest.
Then on October 8, three days before the deadline, the TRA put out another statement. Blackberry services are now compliant with the UAE framework, no suspension on October 11, and thanks to RIM for its “positive engagement and collaboration”. Thats it. No details of the deal, and we doubt well ever get them. Etisalat, which serves over 80 per cent of Blackberry users here, says its carrying on, with the Torch and the Curve coming. Sales had reportedly dropped around 40 per cent during the scare, so the shops will be happy too.
Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: khaleejtimes.com, khaleejtimes.com, gulfnews.com, siliconrepublic.com, theregister.com.
