No Blackberry enterprise services after Nov 30: PTA
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed the cellular operators to stop offering Blackberry Enterprise Services to its enterprise customers after November 30 this year due to the security reasons.
"Yes, PTA has asked the cellular companies to stop offering Blackberry Enterprise Services after November 30", Khurram Mehran Spokesperson of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority confirmed to The Nation on Friday. The PTA has written a letter to the cellular operators to give 90 days of notice to the customers before closing the services altogether.
He informed that only 4,000 to 5,000 people are using Blackberry Enterprise Services (BES) in Pakistan, which is not a huge number. He further said that no BES connection would be active after November 30th, 2015 in Pakistan.
The government has decided to stop the Blackberry Enterprise Services due to the security services, as conversation under BES could not be decoded. The monitoring system in Pakistan could not keep check on the BES.
The PTA Spokesperson informed that Blackberry Internet Service would remain operational, as government did not stop this service. Similarly, the Blackberry phones, with just voice and SMS facility, will also keep working.
Blackberry Enterprise Server gives Blackberry access to a corporate intranet. The intranet is the private, internal, network within a company that is called BES. It's kind of like a mini-internet that is cut off from the rest of the world. In BES, the company operates the server and usually has it sitting somewhere within the corporate network. The IT department controls all aspect of the BES server, and it's likely sitting in a nice and secure location within your data centre.