DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates telecommunications giants Etisalat and Du have begun negotiations with Canadian company Research In Move (RIM) to compensate BlackBerry subscribers after two days of service suspension in the country and across the region left customers without online capabilities. Fred Faradooni, the chief operating officer of the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications company Du, said that “we are negotiating now with RIM to discuss the subscribers' compensation mechanisms due to the suspension of the service since Monday afternoon.” He added that “extending a subscription period equal to the period of suspension is the closest option that can be adopted to compensate the subscribers.” “I think RIM will take care of the suggested compensations since they are the producer and operator of Blackberry services, and the suspension comes from their network,” Faradooni declared. He continued that “we can't estimate the compensation period until the service is totally retrieved.” Moreover, commenting on the recent suspension, RIM stated on Tuesday in a press release that “a technical problem had led to a suspension in the messaging and emailing services in the Middle East and some European countries.” The company added, “we are working now to retrieve the service to the subscribers as soon as possible.” On the other hand, Majed al-Mosmar, the deputy general director in the telecommunications regulatory authority, said “the telecommunications authority and its general director are following closely the developments of retrieving the services by communicating with the state telecommunications' operators.” He continued to say that “Etisalat and Du reassured that negotiations are being held to discuss the subscribers compensations mechanisms, noticing that we can't impose on the state telecommunications operators any compensation since their networks are working with full efficiency. “Also the authority didn't have any communications with the blackberry producer (RIM) regarding the services' suspension, as the UAE telecommunications operators are responsible of communicating with RIM and responding to the subscribers' complaints,” al-Mosmar added. According to sources, the BlackBerry suspension will over globally in the next few days. BM
