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Jakarta. Indonesians could soon be without Internet and e-mail services on their beloved BlackBerries if authorities follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates and restrict the popular devices due to security concerns.

An official from the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) said on Wednesday that a ban was being considered for services such as BlackBerry Messenger, e-mail and Internet access after India and Saudi Arabia announced they might also take similar steps.

“We share the same concerns as those countries,” Heru Sutadi, a member of the BRTI, told the Jakarta Globe. “This is about our national security.”

Security is one of the main features BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has touted over its competitors, with e-mails sent from the devices being encrypted and sent through the company’s own servers and network operation centers, much of which is located in Canada.

That coveted secrecy has made BlackBerries popular with companies and government officials, including Barack Obama, who held onto his BlackBerry even after he became US president.

However, the system also makes it harder for governments to monitor communications sent via BlackBerries compared to other smartphones, which typically send data through open networks.

This has become an issue for countries worried about mobile e-mail or messaging being used by terrorist or antigovernment groups.

“All of the traffic currently goes trough their server in Canada,” Heru said. “This could be dangerous because we cannot monitor it.”

He said the regulatory body had been asking RIM for more than a year to open a representative office in Indonesia and also to set up a mirroring server here.

“Operators are even backing us to put pressure on RIM to open a mirroring server here because it could lower bandwidth cost and increase speed,” he said.

Heru said the regulator had so far been very patient over this issue, but “if it stays like this, we may [ban the service].” A possible ban will be discussed by BRTI officials next week, he added.

According to a news report from Bloomberg, RIM said it respected the regulatory requirements of governments but also the security and privacy needs of its customers.

“RIM does not disclose confidential regulatory discussions that take place with any government,” the company said in a statement.

In a separate statement to reassure its corporate customers, RIM said each company’s e-mails were encrypted with a unique key and even RIM could not decode such messages.

Based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM has been focusing on new markets such as India, Indonesia, Brazil and the UAE as a decade of North American expansion slows.

Revenue from outside of North America rose to 37 percent of RIM’s $15 billion in total revenue in the last fiscal year, up from about 23 percent in 2005.

According to the Indonesian Cellular Phone Association (ATSI), there are as many as 1.2 million BlackBerry users across the country.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, meanwhile, is working on a plan to monitor the Internet for objectionable material.