Viber CEO vows to restore service in Kingdom

Talmon Marco, founder and CEO of Viber Inc., told Arab News in an exclusive interview that his company will find a way to avoid Saudi Arabia blocking its messaging services.
“We will not rest until the service has been restored in Saudi Arabia,” Marco said.
He added: “We are developing technology that will circumvent this block. It will be rolled out in phases. We hope to have the first step in a couple of weeks.”
Overcoming the block is now Viber’s top priority, he said.
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday blocked instant messaging and voice-over-IP (VoIP) app Viber because “it does not currently meet the regulatory requirements and laws in Saudi Arabia,” the Kingdom’s telecom regulator, the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), said in a statement.
The head of the popular messaging application that boasts more than 200 million users described the ban as resulting in a “sad day for the people of Saudi Arabia.”
“We regret this block,” Marco said. “Saudi people, like the people of any other country, should have the right to communicate with their friends and family. It’s a shame that the Saudi authorities feel otherwise.”
Marco said the company has had no correspondence with the CITC in the aftermath of the ban.
“The CITC did not communicate directly with us, but some of the mobile operators in Saudi Arabia were trying to obtain additional data about the inner workings of the Viber network,” Marco said. “We believe their objective was to try and find ways to obtain the contents of messages and calls on Viber. We did not provide this information, even though a better understanding of the Viber network wouldn’t have helped them.
“While we realize the easy business decision is to give KSA authorities free access to user data, thereby ensuring that we continue to do business in KSA, we do not believe this is the right decision.”
He said the company’s policy of protecting its users and respecting its privacy policy is far more important than protecting the short-term prospects of its business.
Asked about the losses that would be incurred by Viber due to the ban, Marco said that that is not significant.
“(There are) several million users, but this is not important,” he said. “This is not about the damage to our future business, future, as Viber will only start offering premium services later this year. The message we want to convey to our users in Saudi Arabia is that it’s about staying true to our users and to our values. It’s about doing what’s right.”
The blocking of the Cyprus-based free phone and text messaging service has caused much frustration among the Kingdom’s residents, especially among the large expat community, which increasingly uses such economical services to communicate with relatives in their home countries.
The CITC said it would take “appropriate action” against other applications, such as, Skype, WhatsApp and Tango, if they fail to comply with regulatory requirements and rules in force in the Kingdom.
Viber’s ban in the Kingdom is not the first.
In 2010, the CITC imposed a ban on certain Blackberry functions with encrypted data services it was unable to monitor. The ban was short-lived as it was lifted after Blackberry’s manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) met the regulator’s demands.