Interception solution: BlackBerry wants 2 years

Blackberry has asked for 18-24 months to provide a complete solution for interception of its Enterprise Mail, but with a condition that its services would not be banned, a guarantee that the government declined to give.

"Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry, can provide the infrastructure in India for BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) services in a time frame of 18-24 months provided it is confirmed that the services will not be banned in India during the period," the Canada-based company said at a meeting with the Department of Telecom (DoT).

The company was earlier given time till January 31, 2011, to provide solution for Lawful Interception of contents sent or received on the device.

The DoT has, however, refrained from giving any guarantee to RIM officials that their services would not be banned in case they fail to provide solution.

The government said creating RIM infrastructure for BES services in India will not only enhance the possibility of accepting such service from security point of view but that may also be of the commercial interest of the company.

Therefore, RIM should seriously consider to create infrastructure for BES in India and condense the implementation time to a much shorter time frame to create such an infrastructure, the DoT officials said during the meeting.

The company informed the government that interception and monitoring in readable format is possible at the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) located at the enterprise, which is availing enterprise e-mail services through the phone platform.

The company added that RIM infrastructure at Canada and England is a mere router and it does not store content, its only route the content to the desired destination.

To the question of installing the server for BES services in India, RIM said, "The company should not be singled out and if all companies offering such services are asked to provide servers in India then RIM will follow the instruction issued by the government."

Meanwhile, the Canadian firm had also offered lawful interception in its security architecture through cloud computing its BlackBerry to BlackBerry Message (BBM) services from Indian operators.

Cloud computing is Internet-based service, whereby shared servers provide software and data to computers and other devices on demand.

RIM infrastructure is ready to receive and process through the cloud computing-based system, lawfully intercepted BlackBerry Messenger data from Indian service providers, the Canada-based firm had said.