Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, today said there was no possibility of providing access to its enterprise mail service. The company also acknowledged that the ongoing security issues related to BlackBerry services had impacted its growth in the country.
“There is no possibility of giving any kind of a solution for interception of enterprise mail services. We don’t have any keys…it is technologically not feasible to give a solution,” RIM Vice-President (Industry, Government and University Relations) Robert Crow said.
The security agencies have expressed concerns over the encrypted data through BlackBerry mobile phones and have been asking for a decryption solution for its corporate mails and messenger services.
RIM, which had averted a ban on its BlackBerry services last year, has already given a solution for interception of its messenger services this month.
Asked if the ongoing issues have impacted the growth of the company in India, Crow said, “I can’t imagine, it has not. The uncertainty has hampered the growth of everybody.” He, however, declined to specify if there was any impact on the sales of BlackBerry handsets in the country.
RIM uses powerful codes to encrypt email messages as they travel between BlackBerry device and a computer known as a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that is designed to secure those emails.
Crow also expressed hope that the issues would be now addressed, after the new Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal announced in his 100-day agenda on January 1 that security issues, including BlackBerry would be resolved.
“There is a broader recognition and appreciation that this is not an issue unique to BlackBerry. BlackBerry represents a very small fraction of the total population of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) in India. There may be more than a million VPNs in India with high security architecture,” he said and added, “We are confident that the solution for messenger services will meet the requirements.”
It is estimated that there are over 1 million BlackBerry users across the country. Crow is also expected to meet Sibal and other officials of the department of telecommunications next week.
