MTNL, BSNL fail to give dates for Blackberry interception

Public sector undertakings - MTNL and BSNL have not yet given any time frame for testing of services for interception of Blackberry services notwithstanding the December 31 government deadline for operators to comply with it or shut their services.

In a letter, the government conveyed to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) that "Blackberry interception solution is in the final stages of development and testing by RIM and the telecom service providers in conjunction with an Legal Intercepting (LI) vendor.

"The developed solution should be deployed in coordination with RIM and offered for testing to the respective TERM cells on or before 31-12-12.

"Failing to successfully demonstrate, a service/services for interception as per norms laid by DoT, the blackberry service may be restrained to be offered to subscribers from 1-1-13 through your network," the letter sent by the DoT said.

This letter follows the responses of the TSPs in which they had given a time frame ranging from two to four months.

Apart from Vodafone which is ready to demonstrate the testing to the DoT, Airtel, Aircel sought 12 to 16 weeks, Loop Telecom four months and Tata by February 2013.

The responses have been received from all the TSPs except MTNL while BSNL which have not given any time frame, an official note said.

The DoT, in its communication recently, asked telecom operators about their readiness for deployment of interception solution in case of blackberry services offered by RIM through their network.

In a note, the DoT said discussions have taken place on intercepting the services provided by Canada-based Research-In-Motion (RIM), manufacturers of the smart phones,

but the TSPs have not been implementing the interception solution in respect of Blackberry services offered by them.

The Blackberry services, which were termed as security threat at one point of time by security agencies, had been asked to provide resolution and web-browsing requirements in respect of Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) in consultation with the TSPs and their lawful interception vendors.

RIM agreed to place a server in Mumbai in this connection, it added. Blackberry claimed to have complied with the requirements of the probe agencies after their services were red-flagged on the security issues as the interception was not in the readable format.

However, the final testing of the solution provided by the RIM along with the TSPs was yet another hurdle which needed to be crossed before getting the nod of security agencies.