RIM: Can't provide access to corporate emails

NEW DELHI, INDIA: BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) on Thursday said it was unable to provide a solution to the government for monitoring its corporate e-mailing service but added that it did not think the service will be banned, as earlier threatened by India.

"The company has no solution for corporate e-mail access," Research in Motion vice-president (industry and government relations) Robert E. Crow told reporters here.

"BlackBerry represents a very small fraction of VPN (virtual private network) used in India. My perception is that this is not an issue unique to BlackBerry," he added.

The business-phone maker had earlier delivered a solution to the government for intercepting its messenger and Internet services but such access for its corporate e-mail services was not provided.

The company stuck to its earlier statements saying that no changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM has no ability to provide its customers' encryption keys.

Crow, however, said that the company's inability to provide access to its corporate mailing service would not translate into a ban-something the government had threatened to do fearing that BlackBerry phones could be used by terrorists and anti-social elements.

"We expect the government to look at it as a wider issue," Crow said.