Blackberry service 'disabled' in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's reaction on the emergence of Facebook fan page 'Everyone Mohammed Draw Day' is increasingly hard. After blocking the social networking site Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and 450 URLs, in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is also crippling the BlackBerry service.

Spokesperson PTA, Khurram Ali Mehran said these efforts are steps that people can not access Facebook pakistan is deemed to have been harassing Muslims.

Dawn, Saturday (22/05/2010) launched, the government has blocked all Blackberry service. But barring these services is likely only temporary.

Blocking this Blackberry service could dizzying number of users. Zahid Sheikh, Head of Information Technology in National Foods Limited said that it would be a serious problem.
"Our officials, not always in the office, they always do, and they travel to work by using email, if this is blocked they certainly would not be able to access email," said Sheikh.

Meanwhile, Wahaj-us-Siraj, CEO Nayatel, one of Pakistan's ISPs, said that instructions to block Youtube, Facebook from the government very quickly and must be implemented.

"We were asked to quickly block those sites," he said.

Siraj said the blocking of Internet traffic will decrease approximately 25 percent of pakistan. "We have reached 65 gigabytes of total traffic and blocking it will reduce 20 to 25 percent," he said.