Viber Media, the Cyprus-based company which runs an Internet-based communications application, is examining ways to circumvent a ban on its services in three Middle Eastern countries by making changes to its software.
Last week, the telecoms regulator in Saudi Arabia announced it will block Viber services in the kingdom. Access to Viber is also restricted by authorities in the UAE and Iran, as countries across the region try to protect the revenues of state-owned telcos.
Viber is working on updates to its service that will be rolled out in phases and allow users to make phone calls, send instant messages and share pictures and locations in any country in the world, according to Viber chief executive Talmon Marco.
He declined to elaborate on how Viber plans to evade the restrictions on its services. The company says it has more than 200mn users worldwide.
The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission, or CITC, said on Wednesday it had banned the use of Viber as the company had failed to meet regulatory requirements. The CITC also threatened further action against other Internet applications and web services if they didn’t comply with the kingdom’s rules. The move by the telecoms regulator followed an announcement in April that it was seeking to regulate the use of messaging services such as Skype and Whatsapp within Saudi Arabia.
Two of Saudi Arabia’s three telecoms operators - Saudi Telecom Co, Etihad Etisalat Co and Mobile Telecommunications Co Saudi Arabia - contacted Viber asking for information about how its network and application functioned, Marco said, while declining to disclose which of the three operators had been in touch. He said that Viber hadn’t been contacted by CITC.
Viber didn’t offer the telcos any information about how its network functions, and the operators didn’t ask for access to the content of the calls and messages being sent over Viber, Marco said. Telecoms operators in Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are blocking the connection between the Viber application on a mobile and the company’s servers, or not allowing access to the Viber website on a desktop computer, he added.
Analysts say telecoms operators in the Gulf, like other parts of the world, have been grappling with the transfer of value to over-the-top Internet companies, such Skype, Google Inc, Whatsapp and Facebook, that offer voice and messaging services for free.
Until recently, the two operators in the UAE - Emirates Telecommunications Corp and Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co - disrupted access to Skype and have so far blocked other applications such as the BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, Voice and Video function.
Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia threatened a ban of BBM in 2010, over security concerns but came to an undisclosed agreement with BlackBerry, then known as Research In Motion.