We just got confirmation on our story earlier this week that FaceTime had gone missing in parts of the world, mostly around the Middle East. @dutweets is the official Twitter account for du, the telecom operator for the iPhone in the United Arab Emirates, and in a tweet just a little while ago, the account confirmed that FaceTime is currently unavailable in that country. The iPhone hasn’t even officially launched there yet, but the account also says that FaceTime “won’t be working as of the launch” (which takes place tomorrow), so even official customers there won’t have access to the video chat feature.
Unfortunately, there’s no detail yet on why — we’ve heard that there may be local restrictions on VoIP technology that would block these kinds of communications. And this is only confirmation for the UAE, though it’s probably a pretty good guess that other outages are legit as well. Stay tuned — we’ll keep an eye out for official confirmation in other areas, as well as a reason why this decision was made.
Thanks, Joe!
Update: The Next Web Middle East has a confusing write up that suggests Apple pulled FaceTime because they assumed it would run afoul of the region’s regulations around VoIP.
TUAWConfirmed: No FaceTime in parts of the Middle East originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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