According to authentic sources, BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) will not be shutting down it’s operations in Pakistan since the entity has agreed to partially fulfil conditions set by the Government.
It seems as if the suspension of BES in Pakistan has dire chances since the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and BlackBerry are holding talks to address the accessing problem. In this regard, a formal proposal has also been forwarded to the involved Government stakeholders who are yet to share their final verdict.
The apparent reason behind the decision taken earlier to suspend all BES operations was based on the BES not allowing the Government to intercept and monitor the calls and messages for security purposes as it is an essential part of the legal framework of countries worldwide.
The Same issue arose in India almost two years ago where the clash of interest of the Indian Government and BlackBerry occurred which was later resolved.
Previously, PTA had approached BES to share encrypted data or risk getting operationally suspended. PTA also directed the mobile operators to not provide the BES service after November 30th, 2015.PTA has reportedly shared that there are almost 6,000 subscribers of the BES service in the domestic market.
For now, BlackBerry has earned itself a prolonged time span during which the Government will decide how to go about the access issue’s resolution in-depth. BlackBerry informed the users on its website through this statement,
“Government of Pakistan has notified BlackBerry that it has extended its shutdown order from November 30 to December 30. BlackBerry will delay its exit from the Pakistan market until then.”
