BlackBerry starts process to set up server in Bangladesh
Blackberry has started process for setting up server in Bangladesh, as the Canadian mobile giant has finally agreed to comply with the country's regulator decision, said officials.
They said the intelligence agency will have the access to monitor subscribers' information after setting up a decoder in the country.
Talking to BSS, Giashuddin Ahmed, vice-chairman of the telecom regulatory body, said the Blackberry had agreed to set up the decoder in the country as per the directive of the regulator-Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
"The BlackBerry has already started the process of collecting necessary equipment for the job that would be completed soon," he said.
Earlier, the regulator decided to shutdown the Blackberry services in the country, as the company did not respond to its request to set up a decoder server in Bangladesh.
Currently, the BTRC said, there is no legal access to the classified information of Blackberry, putting the national security at risk.
Officials said BlackBerry uses special software for its services for why nobody could get access to its server. Any message could only be recovered from the customer handset (encryptor) and receiver handset (decryptor). But, after setting up the decoding server, any law enforcing agencies could get access to the message.
The main services of BlackBerry is regulated from Canada, but the company has set up some regional servers in USA, UAE, Australia, India and some others countries to offer quality services. The Research In Motion Limited (RIM), owner of the BlackBerry, has to install server in India only for security aspect.
However, the BlackBerry is providing its service in Bangladesh using its global server.
According to the BTRC, the number of BlackBerry users in Bangladesh is around 6,329, of which country's leading cellular phone operator Grameenphone has 4,668 customers while Airtel has 1,661 customers. The country has now over 100 million mobile customers. Initially, the postpaid users would be brought under the server.
Grameenphone launched its BlackBerry service in 2008 while Airtel brought out its own in 2011.
BlackBerry offers BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES), BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) and BlackBerry Messenger Services (BMS), which are popular to the customers.
The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies. American intelligence agency CIA alone is the biggest subscriber of BlackBerry, which has 2.5 lakh more connections.
