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BlackBerry 10 passes US defence department tests

Military happy Z10 and Q10 allow chat on the Q.T.

BlackBerry has secured access to a critical market – the US military – for its new operating system and handsets and version 10 of its Enterprise Service software.

Sighs of relief at the news may well be rattling the windows at BlackBerry's headquarters, because the company has staked its future on secure messaging. Winning approval for BlackBerry 10 devices to be used on US Department of Defense networks means the company has a chance of winning business at a colossal customer and can also tell world+dog all about its certification whenever it tries to sell secure messaging elsewhere.

The company is, understandably, crowing about the win and its place on the Unified Communications Approved Product List (UCAPL) maintained by the Defense Information Systems Agency. The content of that crowing is a little curious, as a canned statement from Scott Totzke, a senior veep for security at BlackBerry says “This approval will enable DoD customers to connect their BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 smartphones to DoD networks and securely access assets from work, while enjoying the wealth of consumer-oriented functionality that BlackBerry 10 brings to market.”

Whether Totzke was referring to the "Balance" feature of BB10 that creates a walled garden to facilitate BYOD or a scenario in which military personnel will use generic BlackBerry messaging apps while also being able to use Angry Birds was not explained. On balance, one imagines Totzke was referring to Balance, a suggestion we offer while we wait for BlackBerry to appear on the UCAPL, which at the time of writing mentioned only BlackBerry products from RIM.

The certification applies to both the Q10 and Z10 handsets and the PlayBook tablet. ®

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