MTN will stop offering BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) next week

MTN will stop offering BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) next week

MTN has sent out a text message to all its BlackBerry Internet Subscribers stating that they would be decommissioning the service on the 27th of January, 2017.

With the announcement, MTN, joins the rank of Glo and Etisalat, who have also discontinued the service, which allows legacy BlackBerry devices access the internet and receive push notifications routed through BlackBerry servers.

What that means is that starting on the 27th, users on MTN still using legacy devices on the BIS service, would no longer be able to access the service. Users who are on BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry devices running Android would not be affected in term of service, but would also not be able to renew the said plans. Users on newer devices would still be able to buy either BlackBerry 10 or a regular android plan or internet bundle to connect to the internet and use their services as usual.

It is unclear whether the discontinuations across these networks is because the numbers no longer justify getting a license or whether BlackBerry itself has stopped supporting the service itself, a possibility seeing as the last BIS-capable device was made seven years ago.