United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia Will Shut Down Some BlackBerry Service

"With no solution available and in the public interest, in order to affect resolution of this issue, as of Oct.11, 2010, BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Email and BlackBerry Web-browsing services will be suspended until an acceptable solution can be developed and applied," said Telecommunications Regulatory Authority Chief Mohamed Al Ghanim, according to the emirates news agency, or WAM.
The Wall Street Journal writes that the dispute goes back as far as 2007. The paper adds that because Blackberry messages are encoded by servers in Canadian facilities that cannot be monitored by local UAE officials.
Research In Motion must now face the choices that Dow Jones, the owner of The Journal, and Google did. They can knuckle under to local officials. try to negotiate with them for some middle ground, or potentially have the the BlackBerry and its services suspended permanently. They have, at least, until Oct. 11 to reach a resolution.