Poor Roaming Services Affecting the Middle East BlackBerry Network

DUBAI, UAE, October 12, 2011 -

Despite reporting that all problems with its BlackBerry service had been amended on Monday, RIM’s (Research in Motion) BlackBerry outages continue across the Middle East region for a second consecutive day.

These outages come at a time when the company is struggling to remain relevant to competing smartphones such as Apple and Google. The maker of the BlackBerry, RIM, said that the failure of a critical piece of equipment and inability of a backup system to initialise had left its users in several parts of the world without instant messaging service or reliable web browsing.

“Some users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays,” RIM said in its statement. “We are working to restore normal service as quickly as possible.”

The BlackBerry subscriber network in the UAE maintained the rapid growth it has recorded since the handset was introduced a few years ago, with their numbers increasing by roughly 50% annually. UAE BlackBerry users exchanged more than 12.8 billion texts through their handsets in 2010, nearly four times the total messages used by all other mobile phones in the country.

“A large part of the BlackBerry users in the UAE are aged below 18 years,” said the Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), which oversees the communications sector in the UAE. The UAE, the largest Arab economy after Saudi Arabia, has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world, standing at 178 percent at the end of 2010. The rate is far higher than other countries in the region, including the world’s richest nation Qatar, with a ratio of 129 percent.

IQPC’s Roaming & International Carrier Services Summit will address concerns with local and international roaming services and identify the effect of increased smartphones, like BlackBerry, have on data roaming.

His Excellency, Majed Al Mesmar, Deputy Director General of the TRA, will be delivering the opening ceremony of this year’s Roaming & International Carrier Services Summit to be held on the 4 - 7 December 2011 at Amwaj Rotana JBR, Dubai, UAE. He will be joined by the Middle East’s leading roaming specialists to overcome and debate all current roaming concerns in the region. For more information, visit www.roamingsummit.com 

About Roaming & International Carrier Services Summit:

The Roaming & International Carrier Services Summit will explore key challenges facing executives from the telecommunication industry. Senior Roaming specialists will be discussing the latest developments of the GCC Roaming Regulation and deliver case studies on increasing data roaming usage, driving customer loyalty through roaming incentives, building a portfolio for intra-GCC roamer and many more.

At IQPC’s Roaming & International Carrier Services Summit attendees will have the opportunity to uncover strategies and best-practice models in order to drive and maximise inbound and outbound roaming traffic to grow revenue streams and stay on top in this competitive industry. The Summit includes presentations from leading organisations including: TRA Bahrain, du, VIVA Kuwait & Bahrain, Vodafone, Tele2, Megafon and many more.

About International Quality and Productivity Centre (IQPC) Middle East:

For over thirty years, IQPC has helped the world’s leading corporations solve their business challenges through the sharing of practical industry solutions and global best practice. In the process, the company has built a formidable reputation for quality and value. During this time, the Middle East’s most progressive companies have benefited from IQPC’s unrivalled global reach, which has connected international expertise with regional and local leaders.  For more information, visit www.iqpc.ae

For more information on the forum or to register for the conference, please contact:

Eileen Espelita, Marketing Manager
International Quality and Productivity Centre Middle East
T: +971-4-364-2975
F: +971-4-363-1938
enquiry@iqpc.ae

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