Calling attention

New Delhi, Aug. 2: The government prefers to work closely with operators to monitor push mail devices — such as those from BlackBerry and Nokia — rather than ban the popular services.

Top officials of the department of telecom (DoT) said these services were under “no threat” of being discontinued, and the DoT would be working with manufacturers such as Canada’s Research in Motion and Nokia to ensure that the genuine concerns of security agencies were addressed.

The home ministry had warned that these services might be stopped if the companies refused to part with the proprietary codes.

The ministry had given BlackBerry a 15-day deadline that ended on July 31 to work out a solution, but the Canadian company had not been able to find out a way of tackling these concerns.

Almost all telecom firms, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, BSNL and MTNL, offer BlackBerry services, and the number of users has touched the 1-million mark.

Concerns have also been raised about Nokia’s push mail service.

The Mumbai terror attacks, where handsets were used to contact handlers across the border, have fuelled security fears. Officials said Nokia and BlacMail — a BlackBerry-type mail service — had assured them that they “would cooperate and assist Indian agencies”.

The agencies are also tracking Skype and Gmail.