Blackberry solution expected by April 9

Research-in-Motion (RIM), the Canada-based provider of Blackberry services, has assured Indian operators that it has come up with a solution to the contentious issue of allowing government security agencies to monitor the service without compromising data security.

Communications Minister A Raja confirmed that the solution will be finalised at a meeting with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) on April 9.

This is expected to end uncertainty for 400,000 users in India and telecom companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar, Reliance Communications, BPL and others that provide this small but high-revenue service.

Top RIM executives had a long meeting on the details of the solution with operators in Delhi under the aegis of the Cellular Operators Association of India today.

Blackberry has been under fire since December after the government rejected an application from Tata Teleservices to operate the service. All companies offering the service were also directed to discontinue it from December 31, 2007.

In later meetings, the government demanded the encryption level of the services be reduced, a move operators argued was untenable in the interests of security.

"Most of our users are corporations, so high encryption levels cannot be compromised for corporate mails flowing through the system," said a senior executive.

Also read:
March 12: BlackBerry security issue makes e-com insecure
April 2: Is the Blackberry email a security threat?