Amid looming fear of a ban on the service from September over security issues, BlackBerry users and telcos offering the service have got a two-month breather from the Union government.
Around a million BlackBerry users in India have reason for cheer. They can continue to use the smartphone as before, at least for the time being.
Amid looming fear of a ban on the service from September over security issues, BlackBerry users and telcos offering the service have got a two-month breather from the Union government, following a lengthy high-level meeting of top officials of the home ministry, telecom department and Intelligence Bureau on
Monday.
It is learnt that the government may have decided not to ban the service at this point, given that the Commonwealth Games are around the corner. This is in keeping with DNA’s report on Sunday.
The government has stressed that BlackBerry’s maker, the Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM), is required to put up a server in India, even for testing out the solutions that it itself has offered to the home ministry. The demand has been persistent since 2008.
A day before the August 31 deadline was to expire for compliance with the country’s security norms, the home ministry said it would “review the situation within 60 days”. Two months have been given to the telecom department to test RIM’s solutions to resolve the security issues. Central to the controversy is the government’s demand for access to the heavily encrypted data flowing through the devices, mainly for its messenger and enterprise services.
Sources said the Canadian government’s intervention over the weekend in the matter may have helped RIM to get the extension.
Meanwhile, in an interesting development, Finnish telecom giant Nokia announced that it would activate its Indian server in November for routing data for its messenger services. This may put additional pressure on RIM to put up its server or router in India, experts said.
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