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News >> Technology >>
Too short a deadline, telcos seek more time to resolve Blackberry issue
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 23 September 2010, 19:46 IST
New Delhi: The major telecom service operators have reportedly requested the government to provide additional time to install equipment that can monitor services on the BlackBerry handsets. The deadline given by the government is set to expire on Wednesday.
On September 18th, the government had instructed the mobile phone companies to upgrade their networks for interception of messages sent and received on BlackBerry's network, and to be ready to demonstrate this to the authorities by September 22.
Country's leading telecom operators including Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone, Airtel, Idea Cellular, MTNL and BSNL have not been able to meet this deadline. Hence, they have expressed their concern that the deadline of six days is too short a period to upgrade the network. Only Tata Teleservices said they had sent a compliance letter to the government ahead of deadline.
Although the telcos are able to monitor the BlackBerry messenger services, they do not have the facilities to track enterprise services or the corporate email facility. "We have told the government that we can monitor email - tell them precisely who is sending the communication to whom and also when it was sent. But, we do not have the technology to decipher the encrypted email and share its contents with the government," an executive with a telecom company explained.
RIM had been given a 60 day reprieve by the government to continue services in the country on the condition that it would set up a local server to continue with all its services beyond November.