The Hindu Business Line : DoT asks RIM to set up server in India

Goa, March 28 The Department of Telecom has asked Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company which owns Blackberry services, to look at the possibility of setting up a server in India in case they are not willing to share the decryption code.

The DoT’s request has been supported by Indian mobile operators who are also putting pressure on RIM to amicably resolve the issue at the earliest.

Meeting in Capital

At a meeting between DoT and RIM in the Capital on Friday, the Government has asked the company to make necessary arrangements to allow monitoring by security agencies. Officials from the Canadian High Commission were also present during the meeting. RIM has sought more time to respond to DoT’s request.

DoT officials told Business Line that the company has been told that only Blackberry to Blackberry traffic needs to be monitored.

DoT has given a clean chit to data being sent from a Blackberry device to another device or through the Internet as this can be decrypted by the security agencies without getting the codes from RIM.

Security concerns

Blackberry services had run into rough weather after security agencies expressed concern that they could not monitor the data being sent through the device due to the high encryption codes.

According to Indian Internet services rules, operators are not allowed to use more than 40 bit encryption code unless they submit a decryption key to the Government.

RIM, which uses more than 128 bit encryption codes to make the transmission secure, has refused to submit the decryption codes on the grounds that it was proprietary.

Support for stand

“We are also putting pressure on RIM to do whatever it takes to enable monitoring by security agencies. We support the request to set up a server in India,” said a GSM industry representative.

At present, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, BPL and Reliance Communications are offering Blackberry services in the country to about 4 lakh subscribers.

Tata Teleservices also wants to offer the service but was stopped by DoT after security agencies raised concerns about monitoring.

Locating a server in India will allow the security agencies to monitor traffic at the gateway without having to break into the Blackberry’s secure transmission codes. According to industry estimates, a server would cost $500,000 at the most.

Earlier, DoT had said that the Government was not interested in banning Blackberry in the country.

ISPs’ request

The fallout of the RIM controversy will have a major ramification for the Internet-based application service providers in the country at large. Most of the service providers use 128 bit encryption codes and not all of them have submitted their decryption codes to the Government.

Meanwhile, the Internet Service Providers have asked DoT to raise the permitted encryption levels from 40 bits to 128 bit at least.

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