Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Blackberry Internet Services: to be banned in UAE

"For one cause or another, it has become necessary to impose restrictions upon the use of many commodities, including not a few of the necessities of life. "



(information on the blackberry issue were taken from news articles published in NYtimes.com and BreakingNews.com)


Two days back, i clicked on the tweet of Breaking News on twitter about UAE's banning of Blackberry Internet Services. Later that day i stumbled on NYTimes' article about the issue. Subsequently finding again that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is about to follow suit after UAE's lead in barring the internet services of the famous Blackberry Smartphone.

Yesterday, UAE is on #TT(trending topic) via twitter, spreading like wildfire on the heat of the issue regarding blackberry's services coming to a halt this October. The flare increased when rumors that KSA is going to do the same thing.

The main reason is about security concerns. Having a data plan and activating the Blackberry Internet Services for your Blackberry smartphone lets you enjoy the benefits of Blackberry Messenger, Email and other application clients dedicated only for Blackberry users. These services are exclusive and that the data passing through the cellular towers are then routed high-encryptedly in the networks of Research In Motion (the company for Blackberry). In effect, whoever is the carrier forwarding that data to RIM's server, they don't have much control over it.

All these hubbubs confronts the different angles of opinions in my behalf. Im afraid to be blunt on this but rationalizing the reasons on why they are shutting off the BB services is somewhat untechnically savvy on their side...

There must be a way to decrypt and intercept that highly encrypted data where Research In Motion is controlling over their servers. Giving up on the premise above is like saying dump your Blackberry phone in the garbage and levelling your IT guys to be incompetent.

Consumers are at the losing end in the first place upon implementation of this. With the blackberry internet services being disabled, it defeats the purpose of having a blackberry.

October is a long way to go, for sure they would come up with a brighter and more sensible idea on how to address the "i can't  eavesdrop" thingee.






~mAc

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