Synchronica declares compliance with legislation as RIM’s BlackBerry faces pressure in Middle East

Mobile email

and data synchronization group Synchronica PLC (LON:SYNC) has stated that its flagship push-email and synchronization product Mobile Gateway complies with lawful interception legislation, responding to press reports that products based on proprietary technologies and hosted in offshore data centres (NOCs) could be banned by regulators.
The statement came not long after reports in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal suggested that the United Arab Emirates considered BlackBerry devices manufactured by Canadian company Research In Motion (TSX:RIM, NASDAQ:RIMM)  a threat to national security and could impose a ban on some of the smartphones’ functions that it was unable to monitor. Fellow Islamic state Saudi Arabia later followed the example, banning the use of the BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry IM (instant messaging) service.
These services operate through a handful of secure Network Operations Centers (NOC) around the world, meaning that most governments can't access the data.

According to the Economic Times, Nokia’s OVI push email service is currently under scrutiny by India's Intelligence Bureau which is requesting that the service be banned until Nokia hosts the service in India and email traffic can be monitored.

Synchronica has stated that it is immune from such restrictions as its Mobile Gateway product is typically deployed and managed in local data centres of mobile operators and it does not operate a central Network Operations Centre (NOC). All data remains entirely within the local networks in the country, and is not sent offshore. The company added that it supported lawful interception, which enables government agencies to control traffic.
The Mobile Gateway product does not store email, acting only as a gateway to the original mailserver, and uses open industry standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol for encryption rather than proprietary encryption protocols used by other services.
“Synchronica already has experience working in close partnership with our operator customers to ensure complete regulatory compliance within their markets. We have 40 operator customers across the world, some in very challenging environments, and we experience that the regulatory acceptance of Mobile Gateway affirms our approach of using industry standard protocols,” said chief executive of Synchronica Carsten Brinkschulte.
Mobile Gateway provides a wide range of mobile messaging services from a single handset, enabling to connect to existing Internet communities to drive traffic and user uptake and allowing operators to create their own email services and instant messaging communities.
In late July, Synchronica said that he momentum established in the first six months of 2010, which saw revenues jump 2.5 times and a nearly threefold increase in gross profits, continued into the second half with more customers signing up for higher fees on average.

Revenues increased from £1.33 million in H1 2009 to £3.43 million, which also amounted to 90% of the revenues received in the whole of 2009. Gross profits improved from £1.18 million to £3.28 million as pretax losses narrowed from £2.49 million to £1.34 million.

The average size of deals signed in H1 increased with three contracts of more than US$1 million reported in June alone. Synchronica has also acquired Colibria's IMPS business with group-wide framework agreements covering over 320m subscribers in Latin America.