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Ofcom calls on RIM to filter adult content on BlackBerry devices

December 19, 2011 — 12:04pm ET | By Jason Ankeny

The Telegraph reports that Ofcom officials have requested RIM join operator representatives at a summit to address the issue of BlackBerry content filtering after Conservative MP Claire Perry voiced concerns in parliament. British law mandates that service providers filter content to keep minors from accessing pornographic material--because RIM routes BlackBerry data via the company's own servers as a security measure, carriers have been unable to apply the same checks and balances that block content across other device models.

"It is to do with the way in which the BlackBerry operating system works," an Ofcom spokesperson told The Telegraph. "We are very concerned and want to get this resolved as quickly as possible."

BlackBerry smartphones are extremely popular among British youth. A large number of the U.K's 8 million BlackBerry users are believed to be under the age of 18. The report adds that RIM does offer its own filtering system to U.K. operators, but only T-Mobile has implemented the solution.

The controversy is the latest public relations setback suffered by RIM, which reported dismal fiscal third-quarter results last week while announcing its first BlackBerry 10 smartphones running on QNX software until the "latter part" of 2012 because the dual-core LTE chipset it intends to use for the platform will not be available until mid-year. "This could be game over for the BlackBerry franchise," analysts at Canadian brokerage firm National Bank Financial wrote in a note to clients, according to Reuters.

For more:
- read this Telegraph article