The main advantage of the service is that it provides encrypted email communications by phone that cannot be monitored by a third party
A leading Ukrainian mobile telecommunications operator, MTS Ukraine, launched the country’s first Westernstyled
secure wireless e-mail solution for mobile professionals, allowing subscribers to send encrypted e-mails by phone.
The main advantage of the service, commonly known as BlackBerry, is that it provides encrypted email communications by phone which cannot be monitored by a third party.
The cost of the service is high. According to the MTS-Ukraine website, a single charge for service activation for up to 20 users costs about $8,300 with monthly fees of $60 per user.
The service was launched in October together with Alcatel-Lucent, a global communications solutions provider, and Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM), a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions. RIM is the distributor of the BlackBerry communicators that will be offered by MTS in Ukraine.
Pavel Pavlovsky, MTS-Ukraine general director, said that “we are the first mobile communications operator in Ukraine to offer our clients this effective and reliable service.”
The service “provides improved characteristics for ensuring protection of information. The service has has already won popularity among businessmen and regular users around the whole world,” he added.
Vitaliy Mukhin, an expert for external communications with MTS-Ukraine, said that the service is being offered only to corporate subscribers. He said that many Ukrainian businessmen have already been using the BlackBerry service, but only in roaming mode, meaning they were subscribers of mobile communication operators in other countries and were able to use the service only through them.
Eric Franke, a former CEO of UMC, later re-branded to its Russian parent company’s name MTS, described BlackBerry as a “very interesting” product for many potential customers in Ukraine.
“It is not a money-making product. [But it is a] common product that a lot of big companies are using.”
Franke said MTS could attract many new customers by being the first to offer this service on the market.
Moscow-based MTS, the parent company of MTS-Ukraine, tried launching the BlackBerry service in Russia in 2005.
However, the service is still not available in Russia because MTS and RIM have failed to reach an agreement on issues of the service’s security. According to Russian legislation, state security services must have access to monitoring of all communication services.
