The Government of Pakistan and Blackberry has now been on one table to talk about the Blackberry exit from Pakistan. The company is likely to stay in Pakistan now.

The Government was demanding access to BES user’s data for security purposes. The government has now agreed over negotiations to resolve this issue and discussions have been held in this regard. A proposal has been forwarded among stakeholders and decision will be taken shortly.

BlackBerry will not exit Pakistan now.

PTA since July was demanding access to BES to encrypt data such as emails and instant messages, or it was decided to shut down the services by Nov 30. Due to security concerns BES services were declared to be suspended. For this, PTA also sent letter to cellular operators to give 90 days of notice to the customers before closing the services. According to official estimates there are around 4,500 to 6,000 customers using BES in Pakistan.

The important thing to note is that On November 30, 2015, BlackBerry announced its exit from Pakistan after pressure from Government to give access to BES.

Later PTA has given extension of one month to BlackBerry to sit on table and discuss how the access can be granted in a suitable manner. After this, BlackBerry stated on its website:

“Government of Pakistan has notified BlackBerry that it has extended its shutdown order from November 30 to December 30. BlackBerry will delay its exit from the Pakistan market until then”.