The telecommunications watchdog of Saudi Arabia and the country's local phone operators have reached a preliminary agreement with Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry smartphone.

An official at a telecommunications operator in Saudi Arabia says that the deal involves using local data servers. The move comes as governments demand for more access to the device's secure data. It raised hopes that an agreement can also be reached between Research in Motion and the United Arab Emirates. The country, citing national security concerns, said that it plans to ban BlackBerry services.

The Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC), Saudi Arabia's telecom regulator, delayed a ban on Blackberry's instant-messaging service to give the mobile operators time to test proposed solutions.

In a statement, the CITC said that the deadline was extended "due to the efforts exerted by the mobile phone service providers in order to meet the regulatory demands of the commission."?The agreement was said to involve the installion of a local server in the kingdom.

Saudi Telecom, a state-controlled company, reportedly cut services for the smartphone for about four hours on but later restored them. The other main Saudi carriers are said to hardly have been affected. Saudi Arabia has about 700,000 BlackBerry users.