BlackBerry to continue operations in Pakistan, after government drops data access demands

State-run Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had in July demanded that the company give access to its BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES), which encrypts data such as emails and instant messages.

Earlier it was reported the company would stop operation in Pakistan over the demands of the government to get backdoor access to all the BSES services.

According to COO Marty Beard’s blog-post, the company has made a decision to continue operations in Pakistan.

We would have to request the company, that we are investigating some suspect and need access to data, and company will provide us all the details and logs of that account, said a source.

Nevertheless, leaving Pakistan would have been a tough choice because BlackBerry now strives to grab a larger slice of the worldwide market. The government then extended this date to December 30 and now it has been revealed that the government has rescinded its shutdown order.

He revealed in a short note on company’s official blog that the Pakistani government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have accepted BlackBerry’s stand of neither providing access to BES servers nor access to content of their customers’ BES traffic.

There are between 4,000-5,000 users of BES service in Pakistan and most of the users are diplomats and other top bosses of multinational companies, corporate customers, governments and military personnel, who prefer the service due to its special broadcast features and strong security, which can not be decoded or traced by local security agencies.

BlackBerry is rolling out its latest Priv smartphone across the world.

However, there are some exceptions to BlackBerry’s policies on privacy. In 2010, several countries including India and Saudi Arabia threatened to ban BlackBerry over its refusal to hand over correspondence between its customers.