India extends deadline for BlackBerry access

MUMBAI, INDIA: Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, has been given a new deadline of January 31 by the Indian government for a final solution to get access to all its services, the Economic Times reported.

RIM has to give a solution within the deadline to give the country's intelligence agencies complete access to all the services offered on its handsets, the newspaper said on Tuesday, citing a Home Ministry note.

BlackBerry has granted India's government manual access to its Messenger service and has promised automated access by January 1, enabling authorities to track such messages in real time, the country's top interior ministry official had said on October 1.

India, one of the world's fastest growing mobile telephone markets, also wants access to encrypted email traffic sent via Research In Motion's enterprise servers.

The BlackBerry maker says its system is designed so that only the sponsoring business or organization has the technical capability to grant such access.

Meanwhile, quoting sources, an IANS report said that the new deadline will be till December 31.

The government had earlier given Oct 31 as the deadline to RIM for handing over the encryption keys and codes of its mails and messaging services to the Indian security establishment.