BlackBerry gets reprieve till 31st

NEW DELHI: Canada's Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the iconic Blackberry smartphone, has been slapped an August 31 deadline by the Indian government to come clean with encryption details for its corporate email and instant messaging or face a ban on the two widely-used smartphone services.

The telecom department has been asked "to convey to service providers that two Blackberry services - Blackberry Enterprise Service and Blackberry Messenger Service - be made accessible to law enforcement agencies by August 31. If a technical solution is not provided by then, the government will review the position and take steps to block these two services from the network," the home ministry statement said.

The ultimatum came hours after Union home secretary GK Pillai concluded a high-level meeting with senior intelligence officials and state-run telecom operators on exploring ways to gain access to encrypted BlackBerry communication content.

The stakes are high for the Canadian company since India is one of its fastest-growing markets. Corporate email has been the USP of BlackBerry handsets, enabling the company to tap into the country's expanding high-flier executive flock.

If the shutdown indeed happens, BlackBerry users in India will only be able to use their devices for calls, SMS, general email and internet browsing. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar are the two biggest providers of BlackBerry services in the country. India has about one million BlackBerry users, although there's no data on the number of customers who subscribe to enterprise email and use BlackBerry messenger services.

Telecom ministry officials hinted there could be more meetings with private operators in the run-up to the deadline. It is also learnt that Robert Crow, RIM's VP (industry, government & university relations) met home minister P Chidambaram during the day, although, what transpired in this meeting is unknown.