If you carry a BlackBerry and plans to go to Dubai soon, you might need to consider getting a new phone, or any other arrangement. The important thing is, you need to leave behind your BlackBerry. This is because the UAE has confirmed that their BlackBerry ban also applies to you, you, and you foreigners. Everyone! Blasphemy! I’ve gotta get busy and dig back my Nokia 3310 brick phone if I’m going there in October, as the ban starts at 12^th of October.

The ban applies to BlackBerry data services, so you’ll still be able to make calls from your phone. But since so much business is conducted online—and on BlackBerry—it’s going to be a huge blow to a country that depends so much on, and so actively courts, international commerce. Not very investor-friendly, unless you give them some free iPhones while they travel in UAE.

There’s still plenty of time for either RIM or the UAE telecommunications regulator to blink. Let’s hope someone does, because this current policy ends with everybody losing, except for Steve and Co.

SOURCE Washington Post