Blackberry's, Al Fair & Hi FM

It's old news by the time you read this (broken in the Oman blogosphere by Muscat Jet Driver, and picked up by Muscat Confidential), but Saudi and the UAE have decided to ban RIM's popular business device, the Blackberry, from use in their countries from October. Now, this strikes me as quite a peculiar move for the UAE. I'm not surprised by the Saudi's because, well, just because.

But for the UAE to block the worlds most popular business application, when they are attempting to position themselves as the centre for business - well it's a bit of a head scratcher. The reason, we all know, for the ban is because of BBM. Blackberry Messenger has grown in popularity in recent years as an instant-messaging platform. Now the UAE has an estimated 500,000 users, and Saudi have an estimated 400,000 users (source). Saudi are moving to block BBM only whereas the UAE are going to kill the Blackberry totally - emails, internet browsing & of course, BBM.

The official reason being that RIM's devices do not comply with the local laws - they want to know what you're sending to each other in messages and emails. Which seems ok, accept if I was a nefarious character who did not want my messages being read by the authorities, I would probably use a disposable PAYG phone and if I really wanted to be secure, I'd use one of the many commercially available (and some free) military encryption programs to protect my data. So this to me seems like a power play by the UAE government to try and get RIM to come to the party. Except for a paltry 500,000 users, they'll probably just pull out.

I think it's a storm in a tea-cup.


I also think that there will be a surge in cheap Blackberry devices about to flood the local markets - Now might be the perfect time to buy a cheap crackberry. Workers in Dubai may also actually be pleased about this ruling. Too many people, the world over, are caught working when they should not be. They've been referred to as electric dog-leashes, and quite rightly so. Of course, all that is going to happen, is that companies will switch to a different hand-set and continue to push their emails to their handsets. My Android phone is capable of it, and many, many other smart phones out there are also capable of it.

The irritant is, of course, is that there are large companies based in the UAE, that have shelled out major cash for the RIM Push software server licenses - that is sure to make things a bit sticky. Interestingly enough, Oman's TRA have remained silent on this issue - perhaps they are watching and waiting to see what is going to happen.

Now, some local news.

Al Fair will be opening a new branch in Azaiba, and it should be open by October. I guess they decided that if The Sultan Center can survive there, so can they. And indeed, they will probably be pretty popular. More on that soon.

And finally.

I decided to try Hi FM this morning, having decided that I was bored of the cd's in my car. And I was greeted by Darren proclaiming that milk in bags, much like a chip with ketchup in it, incredibly pointless! Well I'll agree that a chip with ketchup running through it is incredibly pointless - I have to say that milk in bags is a great idea - and this is why: In Canada, milk is commonly sold in bags. Everyone has a cheap (or I guess there are expensive blinged ones too) milk jug. You cut the corner of the bag and put it in the jug, and pour away. It is good for environment because it uses less materials and when it's empty it takes up a lot less space in the eventual landfill it ends up in. Makes sense now?

Thats all for today.

le fin.

The UAE and Saudi get their handbags out.

Reports originating in The Telegraph a few days ago detail a Naval battle between Saudi and the Saudi Lite UAE. Below is an extract from the article, the rest of the article just blabs on about the GCC being unstable again, oil rich, well armed etc etc. But the juicy bit is here:

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries.

According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.

The incident has shocked diplomats who hope the countries, both key American allies, will help implement the West's strategy to constrain Iran's nuclear and military ambitions.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits.

The seabed is rich with oil deposits, while the Dolphin pipeline project to carry natural gas direct from Qatar to Abu Dhabi has provoked irritation in the Saudi authorities. Nevertheless, direct conflict between the two countries' armed forces is highly unusual.

So, that seems a bit strange. I wonder what the Qatari's though of all of it. Of course, what is more alarming about this entire situation is that Saudi are disputing the waters here (between Qatar and the UAE/Saudi area). Yet here's the problem: in 1974, Saudi enacted the Treaty of Jeddah, which depicted the borders of the UAE in this disputed area to look like this:
However, the UAE have never signed this treaty, because they feel that their borders should look like this:
Spot the difference? The UAE believe that they should have a land-link to Qatar (as do Qatar by the way). Yet Saudi have said no, we have a treaty that says the lands ours. Slight problem with that, the UAE have never agreed to it, and this thing's been festering un-agreed for 36 years so far. Now I knew things sometimes take a long time to get done in this part of the world, but this takes the cake!

For old timers here in the GCC, they will remember that you could drive to Qatar from UAE until pretty recently, when Saudi promptly closed their borders and refused to let people drive across (that is, of course unless your a GCC citizen or have a valid visa to do so).

And it does get even more important. The Dolphin gas pipeline runs through this disputed area, and now Oman is buying into this project and taking delivery of this Qatari gas here in Oman. So it'd be pretty obvious who Oman would back in such a situation. So it's a case of Qatar, UAE and Oman all saying to Saudi to get stuffed. But of course nothing like that will ever happen. But something will have to be resolved because eventually someone is going to want to drill that area for oil (which I understand is very rich in oil deposits). Oxy and Total each have 24.5% stakes in the Dolphin pipeline, with Abu Dhabi's investment fund Mubadala controlling it with a 51% stake.

Of course, both officials from the UAE and Saudi are remaining silent on this issue, preferring to keep their dirty laundry out of the spot-light. Given the ability for media to flare things up, that's probably a good idea then,

le fin.