Along with the UAE, Saudi Arabia has been in the news lately because they were considering shutting down all BlackBerry services in their country. The UAE is waiting until October 11th to kill off BlackBerry services, but rather than wait around like the UAE, Saudi Arabia has shut down services for RIM's devices now. The country's three carriers have ceased all BlackBerry messaging services due to concerns from the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission that said that “the manufacturer of the devices [RIM] couldn’t meet the regulatory requirements of the commission and it is not in accordance with the regulations and conditions of licenses issued to service providers, at its present state.” Any company that doesn't cease the services could be fined up to $1.3 million.
It's definitely disappointing that countries are killing off BlackBerry messaging services, especially for all of their business customers. I suppose the good news, at least for us, is that the devices are having services shut off for being too secure. While we won't be seeing any sort of ban like these near us any time soon, I hope that the killing of BlackBerry services ends with these two or three countries, especially for RIM, who could begin to see sales drop significantly if this trend continues.
