The company that makes the BlackBerry sees vast high-tech opportunities in the United Arab Emirates after a brush with regulators who sought to ban some key features of the smart phone, a top executive said Monday.
The upbeat assessments by Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., is part of a corporate charm offensive after a deal with UAE authorities who wanted to shut down e-mail, messaging and web services because of security worries. But he offered no details of the talks that led the UAE to back off an Oct. 11 deadline to sharply curb the BlackBerry’s popular functions.
“This is a market we’re so excited about,” Balsillie said during a keynote speech at a Dubai consumer electronics show, praising the role technology plays in the Emirates. He spoke repeatedly of the UAE’s prospects to become a global leader in telecommunications and information technology.
Balsillie took no questions from the audience or reporters.
RIM has remained silent about what kind of deal it struck with the UAE. Emirati authorities had objected to the way BlackBerry data is encrypted and routed through overseas servers. Regulators said it could pose threats to national security by allowing terrorists or others to communicate in secret.
Canada-based RIM has faced similar questions from telecommunication regulators in major emerging markets such as Saudi Arabia and India.
Mohamed al-Ghanim, director general of the UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, reiterated Monday that Blackberry is now “in compliance” with local rules, but gave no other details.
He also declined to confirm whether there was any judicial oversight on possible government access to users’ data or whether UAE regulators had gained access to the secret codes RIM uses to encrypt BlackBerry data.
Balsillie has previously said RIM has no way of providing government officials with the text of encrypted corporate e-mails sent on its phones,…