RIM seeks 2 years to provide solution

Wants assurance the services won’t be banned.

Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, will provide a solution for intercepting its enterprise services in the next 18-24 months. However, the company said their services should not be banned in India.

After a meeting with department of telecommunications (DoT) and the ministry of home affairs, RIM said the company will provide the required infrastructure to intercept enterprise services, but wanted an assurance from the government that BlackBerry services will not be banned during this period.

RIM has already given a manual solution for monitoring its messenger services. The complete auto solution for intercepting its messenger services will be given by January 31. However, tests with telecom operators may take more time.

The company may also install a server in India, if such guidelines are issued for all service providers.

RIM said its server in Canada was merely a router and it neither stored any content nor did decryption. The company reiterated its earlier statement that it does not possess any key to decrypt the emails. The interception and monitoring in readable format is only possible at the BES server/mail server located at the enterprise, it said.

The government had earlier extended the deadline to offer a final solution to January 31 from December 31, 2010, for giving access to its messenger and enterprise services. Prior to this, the deadline was August 31, extended by 60 days to October-end last year.

It is estimated there are about one million BlackBerry subscribers in India.

RIM uses powerful codes to encrypt email messages as they travel between BlackBerry devices and a computer known as the BlackBerry Enterprise Server that is designed to secure the emails. The security agencies had expressed concerns over encrypted data through BlackBerry mobile phones and have been asking for a decryption solution for its corporate mails and messenger services.