United Arab Emirates telecom officials said Friday that BlackBerry services are now in compliance with the country's regulatory framework, so a planned Oct. 11 outage will not occur.
"Blackberry services are now compliant with the UAE's telecommunications regulatory framework," the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement. "Therefore, the TRA has confirmed today that all Blackberry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010."
The TRA did not say what, if anything, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion had done to avoid a ban except to acknowledge "the positive engagement and collaboration of Research In Motion (RIM) in reaching this regulatory compliant outcome."
Officials in the country had requested that RIM give them access to data traveling over its network, citing security concerns. But RIM has repeatedly said that the encryption standards on its BlackBerry Enterprise Server prevent even RIM officials from accessing that data.
"RIM cannot discuss the details of confidential regulatory matters that occur in specific countries, but RIM confirms that it continues to approach lawful access matters internationally within the framework of core principles that were publicly communicated by RIM on August 12," RIM said in a Friday statement.
Those core principles include a provision that says RIM will make "no changes to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers."
In August, the UAE said it would ban BlackBerry Messenger, e-mail, and Web browsing effective Oct. 11 unless it got access to user data. BlackBerry services in the UAE allowed "users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social, and national security concerns for the UAE," TRA said at the time.
RIM has said its systems were "purposely designed to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to read encrypted information."
Days after the UAE announced its planned ban, Saudi Arabia said it too would ban BlackBerry services if RIM did not provide access to data. In mid-August, however, Saudi officials said BlackBerry services would be available in the kingdom while talks continued.
India has also jumped into the debate. Most recently, an Indian newspaper reported that Indian telecom officials had rejected a RIM proposal, but RIM said its talks are ongoing.