It has given wireless carriers in the country the ability to intercept messages sent over its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) if requested by the government. “The lawful access capability now available to RIM’s carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace,” RIM said in a customer update.

Well, not quite.

The Indian government also wants access to communications sent over RIM’s corporate service. The company hasn’t yet provided that and continues to argue that it’s impossible to do so.

“No changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since, contrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys,” RIM explained in its customer update.

In other words, the solution RIM has provided is a partial one. It still hasn’t met one of the Indian government’s key demands. Will this concession on BBM and BIS be enough to mollify it?

Richard Blumenthal and the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection last week issued a civil investigative demand–the equivalent to a subpoena–for data collected by Google’s Street View vehicles. Friday was the deadline to comply with the demand.

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Nokia says the cuts have been on the table since October, when it announced a personnel restructuring during its Q3 results. And indeed it has. From a press release issued that month:

“Altogether, the planned changes are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally, as activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated. Nokia will begin applicable consultations with employee representatives about these plans.”

News of the layoffs comes on the same day that Nokia said it will miss another shipping deadline for its new E7 smartphone. That device, which will run the next iteration of the company’s Symbian OS, was expected to launch this year. Now its debut has been postponed until early 2011.

According to AFP, an Indian government minister told Parliament on Friday that no solution has been reached in the standoff.

RIM faces a January 31 deadline to meet the country’s demand for a way to monitor communications.

In a statement on Friday, RIM said it is still “fully cooperating” with the Indian government and remains “confident that any outstanding concerns between RIM and the Government of India can be resolved to our mutual satisfaction.”

RIM said it is still pushing to have the security concerns handled on an industrywide basis rather than seeing itself singled out, and it repeated its statement that it won’t create “special deals” for specific countries and that it can’t share the data its business customers encrypt, even if it wanted to.

It would seem, then, that RIM is on target to provide India’s Home Ministry with a solution that will allow it to “lawfully” monitor BlackBerry services by the January 31 deadline the two parties have agreed on.

According to RIM, that’s not the case at all. In fact, says the company, it has no plans to make any changes to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since A) it professes to maintain a consistent global standard for lawful access requirements and doesn’t make specific deals with individual countries and B) it couldn’t provide its customers’ BES encryption keys to curious governments even if it wanted to.

“RIM has once again found it necessary to address certain media reports in India containing inaccurate and misleading statements and information based on unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources,” the company said in a statement given to me. “Our customers can be reassured that the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution continues to be the gold standard for security-conscious organizations in India and worldwide. All our discussions with the Government of India have been and continue to be productive and fully consistent with the four core principles we follow in addressing lawful access matters around the world. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Despite that rather terse rejoinder, RIM says its negotiations with India are moving forward. “Our discussions with the Government in India have been and continue to be productive and we fully expect the matter to be satisfactorily resolved,” said a spokesperson.

The deadline for compliance had been Oct. 31, but India’s Home Ministry has extended it to give RIM (RIMM) a bit more time to provide a solution that would allow it to “lawfully” intercept encrypted corporate information. The new deadline: January 31. Evidently, the two parties have settled on a solution; RIM just needs more time to implement it–at least that’s what these minutes from a recent Home Ministry meeting suggest.

“RIM would be asked to adhere to the timeline of January 2011 to give the final solution wherein lawful access for BlackBerry messenger will not involve the overseas data path. Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), which had attended the discussions, found that the solutions offered by RIM (for BlackBerry messenger) are prime-facie agreeable. The timelines of January 2011 were also agreeable.”

That bit about lawful access not involving an overseas data path seems to suggest that RIM has, at the very least, agreed to host a server in India. What it’s planning to do beyond that remains to be seen. Company execs continue to insist that there’s no technical solution to allow lawful access to its BlackBerry Enterprise Service. This is the second time RIM has won a reprieve from the Indian government. It seems doubtful there will be a third.

Either way, the deal is likely to officially close in early February.  And when it does, Oracle (ORCL) and Sun (JAVA) will be well prepared. “The integration team have been working very hard to complete all of the planning and executives on both sides of the merger believe that deal will be approved,” one source told me. “The majority of the hiring decisions have been made and the bulk of the product decisions and organization structure is completed.”

As part of its preparation, Oracle has written three email announcements, which it plans to distribute to Sun employees. The first, a congratulatory note for employees who will keep their jobs after the transition. The second, a notice of termination alerting employees who will lose their jobs. The third, an offer of a temporary position working through the transition is most likely to be distributed to employees in finance and human resources.

For rank-and-file Sun employees, the second notice is obviously ugly news. Not so for executives: The cash payout at the VP and officer level for being let go is quite generous, and I’m told a certain number of “howls of whoopee” can be expected from those in senior positions hoping for a pink slip.

And just how many pink slips are to be distributed? That’s unclear. I’ve heard from some sources that a significant reduction in workforce is almost certain. Others tell me “layoffs are not going to be anywhere near predictions.”

For the sake of Sun’s long-suffering employees, let’s hope it’s the latter.

Reached for comment, Sun declined to offer on”. “Sorry, we do not comment on rumors or speculation,” a spokesperson told me.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) finally dotted all their i’s and crossed all their t’s today on the final definitive agreement for their search and online advertising partnership.

Somewhere a lawyer got his briefs.

No one but tech reporters and hair-trigger Wall Street analysts care, but the pair had to extend the deadline for inking the formal deal because it was so darn complex!

The companies have been near closure for weeks, but niggling details kept popping up, sources said, the better to sue each other if things went bad.

Now that this small hurdle has been cleared, MicroHoo has to wait for a variety of regulatory approvals before attempting their daring and quite possibly foolhardy ascent to the top of Mount Search, from whose peak Google (GOOG) has been enjoying the view all by its lonesome for a good long time now.

That is expected to happen early in 2010, and how the software giant and the Silicon Valley Internet icon traverse the dangerous crevasse of coordinating their advertising and tech systems will be gripping to watch (from the cozy safety of BoomTown’s HQ, of course).

And I can’t wait until MicroHoo has to master the blue links of death ice field.

You know: Because it’s there.

Here is their joint statement:

Yahoo! and Microsoft Finalize Search Agreement

SUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA–04 December, 2009–Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation today announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July.

The companies released the following joint statement:

“Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.

“Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

Last month, Cisco upped its $3 billion offer for Tandberg to $3.4 billion in hopes of winning the support of investors holding at least 90 percent of the company’s shares, among them a large chunk that argued the bid was too low.

And that seems to have done the trick. By yesterday afternoon, the Dec. 3 deadline Cisco had set for the deal, the company had gained control of 89 percent of Tandberg’s shares. And now, a few hours later, Cisco has managed to win more than the 90 percent it desired.

So the deal will move forward, although as I said, the company does have a DOJ request for information to address first. “Cisco intends to respond expeditiously to this request and continue to work co-operatively with the DOJ in connection with its review,” the company said in a statement. “Cisco continues to expect the transaction will close during the first half of calendar year 2010.”