BlackBerry to continue operations in Pakistan

Jan 26, 2016

BlackBerry will be continuing its operations in Pakistan with the government of the Asian country rescinding its shutdown order.

“After productive discussions, the Government of Pakistan has rescinded its shutdown order, and BlackBerry has decided to remain in the Pakistan market”, said Marty Beard, BlackBerry’s COO.

He revealed in a short note on company’s official blog that the Pakistani government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have accepted BlackBerry’s stand of neither providing access to BES servers nor access to content of their customers’ BES traffic.

The development would come as a huge relief for BlackBerry considering that Pakistan is one of the very few remaining countries where people are still attracted to BlackBerry devices.

It all started as early as July this year when Pakistan Telecommunications Authority notified the country’s mobile phone operators that BlackBerry’s BES servers would no longer be allowed to operate in the country starting in December “for security reasons.”

BlackBerry revealed at the time that the government demand wasn’t a question of public safety and that the truth was that the Pakistani government wanted the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message.

BlackBerry didn’t comply with the directive for it doesn’t support “back doors” granting open access to customers’ information and have never done this anywhere in the world.

The government had ordered a shutdown of the service if BlackBerry didn’t comply and the date it had finalized was November 30. The government then extended this date to December 30 and now it has been revealed that the government has rescinded its shutdown order.

Source: Dispatch Tribunal