The decision of the United Arab Emirates to ban BlackBerry email, messenger and web browsing services goes to the heart of the way in which the handheld devices operate – itself a consequence of the mobile market in which they were born.
When the first BlackBerry appeared, over a decade ago, mobile phone networks were far more basic than they are today. The most innovative service the majority of users had seen since mobile devices first appeared in the 1980s was the introduction of text messaging.
In the US, many mobile users were still making calls on analogue networks, while in Europe the new digital operators were only just introducing data services. But the sorts of speeds possible over networks such as Orange and Cellnet in the UK were pitiful. Speeds of 9.6Kb per second – less than 1% of the average speed available in the UK today, according to recent research – meant the networks had to resort to offering a pared-down version of the internet using Wap (Wireless application protocol) technology. Using a mobile phone to receive email, let alone access the "real" internet was almost unheard of.
By the mid-1990s, Canada's Research In Motion (RIM) was already working with partners on a messaging device that would work on a new wireless data network, which its owners hoped would be rolled out across Europe and the US. It was not much of a success – although the UK network that used this technology eventually became Turbo Dispatch, which now sends mechanics from local garages to help millions of stranded motorists every year.
As a result, RIM switched to working with the existing mobile phone companies, but to squeeze emails across their networks meant using compression technology. RIM also needed to be able to persuade jittery corporate IT departments their emails would be safe, which required encryption technology. To create such a lean and secure service required an end-to-end solution, with both the device, the BlackBerry, and the server hosting the user's email being able to understand each other. However, RIM wanted to be able to offer its devices on any mobile phone network.
As a result, it created the Network Operations Centre (Noc), which seems to have created such a headache in the Gulf. Every mobile phone operator that wants to offer BlackBerry devices has to have a connection to a Noc: – there is apparently one based in Canada to cover the Americas and one covering Europe and Asia. A company that wants to offer BlackBerrys to its employees, meanwhile, has to install software within its own IT systems that can communicate with the Noc.
When a user's inbox receives a new email, that software securely communicates with the Noc, which then connects securely to the BlackBerry over a mobile phone network to deliver the email. It uses compression technology to make sure the email can be squeezed over even the most congested network. Numerous research reports over the past year have suggested that BlackBerrys are at least five times more efficient at email and attachment viewing than any other platform.
RIM has since opened its network up to consumer email services such as Gmail and Hotmail, which together with the introduction of a range of stylish devices aimed at the consumer market has created a boom in usage of BlackBerry phones among teenagers. Opening up the RIM network to the web has also allowed internet browsing, which is also apparently faster on a BlackBerry than other devices. They are three times more efficient than other carriers, according to a recent report by Rysavy Research.
But there is another side-effect to the way that RIM's network architecture is configured and it has been seized upon by cash-strapped teenagers: BlackBerry Messenger. Because RIM knows every BlackBerry device in use, regardless of which network it is on, and they are all directly connected to its Nocs, BlackBerry users who have devices with the right software can communicate with each other without incurring the network interconnection and roaming charges associated with text messages.
Text messages and telephone calls, meanwhile, are routed solely over a mobile phone network, so neither will be affected by the UAE's decision. That also explains why when there is a problem with RIM's network – which has happened in the past – BlackBerry users can still make calls.
The first BlackBerry appeared in the late 1990s and was effectively a two-way pager. The first full email device – the 5810 – appeared in 2002.
The name, incidentally, was created by the company's brand agency, which looked at the trademark small buttons on the device's keyboard and decided they looked like the pips on a strawberry. That name, however, sounded too "slow". Blackberry sounded punchier and it stuck.