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Our Bureau

New Delhi, May 5 The Government on Monday said there are only 1.14 lakh BlackBerry mobile users in the country.

The number of users, which have been released for the first time, is significant given that BlackBerry services have come under the scanner of the security agencies. Even if the Department of Telecom asks the company to stop offering the service, it will not have any significant impact on consumers going by the small number of users.

However, such a decision may have a larger implication for the Internet sector in the country as all other services which currently use high encryption codes could also come under security scanner.

The Minister of State for IT and Telecommunication, Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia, said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha, “As per the information received from service providers, there are around 1,14,000 subscribers as on date who are being provided BlackBerry services by various telecom companies.”

Currently, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar and BPL Mobile provide BlackBerry services in the country.

While the Canadian firm Research-in-Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry, has not given India-specific subscriber numbers, it was widely reported earlier that there could be as many as half a million BlackBerry users in the country. The company had 14 million subscribers globally.

Meanwhile, discussions are on between DoT and RIM to find a solution to the concerns raised by the security agencies.

While DoT has told RIM that it needs to either set up a local server in the country or give a pair of the decryption keys for the security agencies to keep track of data being sent through BlackBerry devices.

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