RIM, India at Stalemate as Deadline Arrives

Research In Motion has reached another impasse in its negotiations with the Indian government, and this one may not be as easily overcome as those that preceded it. Though New Delhi has been provided with access to RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), it continues to demand access to the company’s BlackBerry Enterprise Service–something RIM insists it is unable to provide. With the deadline for compliance with these demands expiring today, the threat of a countrywide ban on BlackBerry services looms in the background.

“They have given us a solution to the Messenger service,” India’s home affairs minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said today. “We will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too.”

And RIM will likely insist it can’t. Unless the situation has suddenly changed from last week, when VP Robert Crow reiterated the company’s claim that it cannot decipher the encrypted corporate emails sent over its network. “We can’t give a solution for enterprise services,” he said. “It’s not possible to do so, because the keys of that service are with the corporate enterprises and corporate entity that owns the server.”

So what, then? That’s not yet clear, but we may know more shortly. Said Chidambaram, “I think a decision [about the future of RIM in India] will be taken today by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Telecom Ministry.”

How do you say “deadline extension” in Hindi?

http://twitter.com/nkrvivek Vivek Raghunathan

Deadline extension in hindi – samaya sima vistara
Anonymous

dhan’yav?da
Anonymous

Rim has no choice but to abandon its BES platform and hide behind IBM’s Lotus platform including its networking layor. IBM has a much more workable relationship with India than Rim’s already in-tatters public and international relationships. IBM stands to win over all Rim’s assets for nearly free in another 2 to 5 years. Rim’s global network will be absorbed into the IBM Global Network quite invisibly.
Anonymous

Rim will be absorbed into IBM within 2 years or less. IBM has an excellent working relationship with India. BES will be absorbed into the LotusSphere layers. Playbook apps will be Lotus apps. Depending on end user and mounting consumer influences, Rim equipments will be obsoleted in favor of the dominant user demanded devices, most likely the iPad for cloud business apps. IBM is not in the hardware business unless it is zOS related. This should conclude Rim’s relatively brief and turbulent lifetime on the tech stage.
Anonymous

Regardless who owns RIMM and the email platform it changes nothing about how the encryption works.

The Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) holds one part of the encryption key and the blackberry device the other. RIMM is merely the pipe for the secure channel. Unsure why India doesn’t grasp that as a master key would negate the whole idea of encryption and basically invalidate RIMM’s solution.

@James – your just looking foolish
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_633A6GNC6FBALVZEFJURKWBSKA Tyler James

BLA BLA BLA BLA your reveiw stunk
John Peters

Oh yeah, abandon BES which is what every company in the world wants. Nice try. I can’t believe posts like this are not removed from this site.
John Peters

Next, India will demand that all PC manufacturers provide it with a master key when using a VPN. It’s NOT possible. Indian should know better! It’s clear that the diplomats are not technology experts. Hopefully the Indian government has some technology advisors who can explain why a master key is not possible.

RIM, India at Stalemate as Deadline Arrives

comments so far. Add yours.

AllThingsD by Writer