status of viber calling from saudi arabia

BlackBerry caved, but the details of the compromise weren’t made public. But in 2010 both Saudi Arabia and the UAE threatened to ban BlackBerry instant messaging and demanded that the company install local servers to censor the service. That might be a hint that, at least in the UAE, business interests are at play: Skype and Viber, unlike WhatsApp, allow users to make voice calls for free, and international calls are where the telecom operators are likely losing most of their revenue. In the neighboring United Arab Emirates, many features of Skype and Viber are already blocked, but WhatsApp isn’t. Saudi Arabias telecom regulator has banned use of the web-based communication application Viber, which is hard for the state to monitor and deprives licensed telecom companies of revenue from. Conventional international calls and texts are a lucrative earner for telecom operators in Saudi Arabia, which hosts around nine million expatriates. Local media reports have cited industry sources who accuse telecom operators like Saudi Telecommunications, Mobily and Zain of asking the CITC to impose censorship. Saudi now has 15.8 million Internet subscribers and the average user watches three times as many online videos per day as counterparts in the United States, according to YouTube. While stricter controls could be the authoritarian regime’s attempt to monitor for signs of social unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring protests of 2011, there’s also a business angle at play. These free applications deprive licensed telecom operators of revenue from international calls and texts, which is considerable given that Saudi Arabia has a large expatriate population.

Status of viber calling from saudi arabia