The Hindu Business Line : No question of banning BlackBerry, says DoT

New Delhi, March 14 Putting to rest all speculation on the future of BlackBerry mobiles in India, the Department of Telecom on Friday ruled out imposing a ban on the service.

“There is no question of banning it. We are keen to resolve the issue at the earliest. We are not interested that we say BlackBerry will not be used in this country,” said Mr Siddartha Behura, Secretary of DoT, at the sidelines of an industry event.

DoT met all the mobile operators offering BlackBerry services on Friday in a bid to find to a resolution to concerns raised by the security agencies.

Security issues

BlackBerry was first launched in India in 2004, but it was only recently when Tata Teleservices sought permission for offering the service that security agencies raised objections. The main concern for the security agencies was that they could not monitor the data being transmitted through BlackBerry devices due to the high bit encryption code.

Research in Motion, which offers BlackBerry services, was asked to provide the decryption codes but the company refused since it was proprietary. “We want operators to talk to the BlackBerry people and put pressure on them to provide the necessary, satisfactory answers to security agencies. That is what we are talking to them (about),” Mr Behura said.

“The Government has taken the right decision not to stop the service because if you terminate BlackBerry then you will have to stop a many other Internet-based services on offer at present. It could have snowballed into a much larger issue and the consumers would have been the ones to bear the brunt,” said an industry representative.

DoT officials said that once the security issues are addressed Tata Teleservices would be given the permission to start BlackBerry services. State-owned BSNL said it was also interested in launching the service.

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