Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on 3G in Delhi. Raja when asked about the future of Blackberry said: "The Blackberry issue will be in hand within a week or two. The national security advisory is already dealing with all these issues, and most of the security issues have been resolved to the satisfaction of the security agencies.
In the last few weeks a series of meetings have been held between the Canadian firm, Research-in-Motion, which offers Blackberry services and the the Department of Telecom (DoT) as well as officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs, to find out way and means to resolve the security issue.
The Blackberry services had come under fire with the security agencies pointing out that data on the service cannot be monitored by the agencies as the sever is located abroad which is in violation of the rules and could lead to a security threat.
The DoT had earlier asked operators providing the service to close it down by December 31st last year but gave all of thenm an extension of three months.
BlackBerry services in India are provided by . Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar and Reliance Communications amongst others.
Raja also promised speedy rollout of 3G as soon as the clarifications sought from TRAI has been received.
He said that a meeting of an empowered group of ministers (EGOM) will be held within a month to deliberate on the method of allocation of the the much awaited 3G Spectrum. Trai had suggested auctioning of 3G spectrum which has been accepted by the DOT.
Responding to the the request of Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and CEO Bharti Enterprises to help in increasing the penetration and spread of fixed line services, Raja announced that all fixed line providers (BSNL and private) will be exempted from adjusted gross revenue (AGR) in the next couple of months.
On spectrum the Minister said that it was a limited and scarce natural resource for which the demand was always more than the supply. He assured that every effort is being made to get the spectrum vacated and coordinated for commercial use but admitted that it may take time and may become available only in phases.
