Saudi Arabia has joined the United Arab Emirates in banning certain BlackBerry services.
The country's Saudi Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) announced Tuesday that it has ordered the three wireless providers in the region to stop providing BlackBerry services, effective Aug. 6, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has not complied with CITC regulatory requirements, the commission said in a statement.
The move comes several days after the UAE announced plans to ban BlackBerry Messenger, e-mail, and Web browsing in the country effective Oct. 11. The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) also said RIM is not in line with the country's telecommunications regulations.
What that means is that RIM and BlackBerry services operate in such a way so that no one – from RIM to the government of Saudi Arabia – can monitor users' activity.
"The BlackBerry enterprise solution was designed to preclude RIM, or any third party, from reading encrypted information under any circumstances since RIM does not store or have access to the encrypted data," RIM said in a Tuesday statement. "RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key. This means that customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise."
The CITC said it gave mobile providers STC, Mobily, and Zain three months to make sure RIM's services were in compliance with Saudi regulations, with a deadline of Aug. 6.
RIM said it offers one BlackBerry enterprise solution to all its customers, and does not favor one country's government over another. The TRA suggested that RIM had complied with regulatory requests in other countries, but RIM denied this.
"RIM cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard and the same degree of respect," RIM said. "Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded."