India lays down a Blackberry monitoring deadline

SMARTPHONE OUTFIT Research in Motion's attempts to give Indian spooks special access to data on its Blackberrys does not appear to have been enough to stop the government from reading the mobile phone maker the riot act.

The government has sent formal notices to the country's mobile operators telling them they must have equipment to monitor Blackberry services by the end of the month.

One of the bigger Indian telcos, Tata Teleservices told BBC News that the letter said it must "ensure that Legal Intervention (LI) capability is put in place" by the end of the month.

RIM had said that it grants "lawful" access to data and could hand over unencrypted messages. But giving the spooks access to its server was pretty much a backtracking few would have expected.

India has admitted that other Blackberry services, including voice and SMS traffic, were already "available to law enforcement agencies" All that is lacking is access to the encrypted email and messaging services.

The company is in talks with the Indian government but no one is clear on how far the company will move towards allowing the Indians access. µ