India pushes Blackberry deadline to January 31
updated 08:20 am EDT, Tue October 12, 2010
Three-year saga continues, end in sight?
The Indian government has extended RIM’s October 31 ban deadline to January 31. According the Economic Times newspaper, the new arrangement has given RIM an additional 90 days to give India's security forces appropriate access to its Enterprise data services. RIM has made some of its services manually accessible, including its messenger service, but has promised to deliver real-time access by the start of next year.
Other services that Indian authorities want to access from a security standpoint includes RIM’s encrypted corporate email system. RIM’s officials have been liaising with Indian authorities and have reportedly made assurances that unmonitored Blackberry data services could not be used by terrorist groups in real-time to communicate during terrorist attacks.
This follows news that the United Arab Emirates, with whom RIM has also had to assuage has now dropped its threat to ban Blackberry devices as RIM is now compliant in that jurisdiction. With the UAE matter resolved, RIM now has until January 31 next year to bring to an end its ongoing saga with the Indian government that first began three years ago.
