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iOS 13.6 Enables FaceTime in the United Arab Emirates [Update: With Region Change]

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Apple's iOS 13.6 update, released today, appears to enable FaceTime in the United Arab Emirates, a country where the FaceTime app was previously unavailable for use.

facetimeiphoneipad.jpg

According to MacMagazine and multiple Twitter users, the FaceTime feature is accessible after installing the iOS 13.6 update. Apple did not mention the update in the iOS 13.6 release notes, and support documents haven't been updated as of yet.


Local regulatory rules have blocked FaceTime in the UAE, but rumors over the course of the last few years have suggested that Apple was working with government officials to lift the ban on FaceTime.

All phones sold in the United Arab Emirates have FaceTime disabled by default, but installing iOS 13.6 should unlock the feature. There have also been multiple reports that FaceTime is available in the UAE on devices running iOS 14 as well.

FaceTime also used to be banned in Saudi Arabia but it became available in the iOS 11.3 update.

Update: MacMagazine, the site that originally reported the changes, now says that for FaceTime to work in the UAE, the iPhone needs to be set to another region. This indicates that FaceTime is not yet officially available in the United Arab Emirates.

Article Link: iOS 13.6 Enables FaceTime in the United Arab Emirates [Update: With Region Change]
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/15/ios-13-6-uae-facetime-enabled/
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www.quora.com

Why is FaceTime banned in UAE?

Answer (1 of 30): Any voice service that bypasses the UAE voice monopoly is illegal. I remember when I was in the Dubai airport, the disclaimer for the free Wi-Fi essentially indicated that there were three highly nefarious activities that were intolerable on the UAE parts of the Internet: 1. T...
www.quora.com www.quora.com

Its strange that Facetime would work from a Mac. That sounds like a loophole.
 
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konqerror said:
Their laws say that only the government-owned telephone monopoly can provide VoIP communications.

Apps like Zoom, WebEx and VoIP features in Teams, Slack, etc. are banned. There is a temporary exemption for these apps due to COVID.
Click to expand...

Sounds like they want to be able to spy on all voice communications. Why else would they ban it?
 
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zorinlynx said:
Sounds like they want to be able to spy on all voice communications. Why else would they ban it?
Click to expand...

Money. The US would likely be the same, had the Bell System monopoly not been broken up.

If it's an issue with spying, then pass laws to require wiretap capabilities. China is big on VoIP apps, like WeChat.
 
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Curious if this enables Facetime use in Oman as well. We always need to connect through a VPN here in order to use Facetime (and Skype and many others). I’m stuck on iOS 12 (iPhone 6) so can’t test this update...
 
mfuhrer said:
Curious if this enables Facetime use in Oman as well. We always need to connect through a VPN here in order to use Facetime (and Skype and many others). I’m stuck on iOS 12 (iPhone 6) so can’t test this update...
Click to expand...

Is Skype completely blocked in Oman? In the UAE, Skype is not blocked on commercial lines - not just for employees at offices or whatnot but also for guests. So it is possible to use Skype with no VPN at a Starbucks or a hotel, for example.
 
Cool! I bought my iPad Pro in Dubai cuz there is NO tax not thinking about this and always had to set my region to Egypt for the Facetime app to appear
 
Back in blackberry days, UAE required blackberry to open a backdoor into the encrypted communication before it was allowed to operate. Assuredly they are requiring the same of Apple.

www.reuters.com

BlackBerry users in UAE, Saudi may have services cut

More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
So there is a restriction on VoIP but not VoLTE ... what a bunch of morons running UAE telecom, or maybe they are smart and realize they will eventually lose control.

Voice, video, messaging, etc. is evolving, world wide, into a data bundled packets for transport.
 
maerz001 said:
Why was that not allowed?
Click to expand...
Due to local regulations, until now only entities authorized by the government were able provide video calling services, for which they charged (and those entities are presumably owned by people close to the government such as firends or family of governemt officials, so pretty much they were the government’s companies). This led to apple being forced to block the facetime feature in UAE and other middle eastern countries.
 
zorinlynx said:
Sounds like they want to be able to spy on all voice communications. Why else would they ban it?

Authoritarian governments suck.
Click to expand...
They charge for those services, that’s another reason. If the same services were offered for free, such as Apple´s Facetime, no one would ever use the one provided by the local company.
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AceFernalld said:
The world is incredibly messed up.
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Not all the world. Just some countries are messed up, not all.
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konqerror said:
Their laws say that only the government-owned telephone monopoly can provide VoIP communications.

Apps like Zoom, WebEx and VoIP features in Teams, Slack, etc. are banned. There is a temporary exemption for these apps due to COVID.
Click to expand...
Which lets them charge for those services. If they had to compete with free services such as facetime or skype, they’d have to offer their own service for free too and sacrifice those profits. Their answer? make themselves a monopoly through local regulations.
 
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Probably a backdoor was enabled for certain iOS versions so the govmnt can monitor.
 
AceFernalld said:
Can you elaborate? And btw I said 'the world' as in the whole entire world.
Click to expand...

The US is one of the few remaining developed nations that still has a postal monopoly, and the only nation in the world that has a monopoly on mailboxes.

The laws are written such that any "message directed to a specific person or address and recorded in or on a tangible object" must be sent via the US Postal Service (or the postage paid anway), with limited exceptions.

So if you think about it, this means the US Government has a monopoly on communication via physical means, exactly how the UAE state carrier, Etisalat, holds a monopoly on communication via virtual means.

This line of reasoning, a state monopoly on citizen's communications, is why the post office ran the phones in many countries.
 
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Just checked - FaceTime Audio is still disabled on Chinese iPhone models, no matter the region :confused:
 
I’ve used FaceTime in the UAE so it’s only on phones sold in UAE
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lartola said:
Due to local regulations, until now only entities authorized by the government were able provide video calling services, for which they charged (and those entities are presumably owned by people close to the government such as firends or family of governemt officials, so pretty much they were the government’s companies). This led to apple being forced to block the facetime feature in UAE and other middle eastern countries.
Click to expand...

only on phones actually sold in UAE. You could always use a phone from somewhere else on UAE’s cell network and facetime without issue.
 
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