If you’ve been following the continuing saga of the potential BlackBerry ban in India, you may remember that Tata Teleservices application to offer BlackBerry on their network was the fire spark that set all of the “BlackBerry is too secure” controversy off.
Well, despite the Indian DoT’s initial rejection of Tata’s application to carry the BlackBerry and the threat of a potential BlackBerry ban, Tata Teleservices has decided to launch the BlackBerry anyway.
TSL has told the government that the delay was costing it heavily in terms of “loss of business opportunity and recurring revenues.”
“We do appreciate that there are security concerns and concerns on the subject of lawful interception. We, however, feel that having followed procedures to seek approvals we can’t be suffering vis-à-vis such operators who never sought such clearances,” the company explained in a letter to the DoT.
To make a long story short Tata says regardless of if they have the governments blessing or not, they will be rolling out BlackBerry service on their network.
I wonder what the DoT will have to say about that?
[Source]
That’s a foolish move. All that money spent along with the possibility that they may have to pull back the devices in the future.
As much as I personally like the BB, there are other alternatives.
I bet that they are banking on the fact that RIM will not / cannot allow one of the worlds largest emerging markets to go without BlackBerry Service because the cannot figure out how give the Indian government what they want.
Perhaps, but for a large company to ‘bank’ on something that’s not 100 percent, and against a government is a huge gamble. Somebody is going to have to hand in their badge if it doesn’t work out in their favor. That’s a lot of money to throw away.
TaTa confuses me as a company… you may have heard that TaTa Motors recently bought Jaguar and Land Rover. It’s kind of a pride thing for the heavyweight India company because those car companies used to be owned by Britain… which as we know… used to rule India. And now TaTa owns their most successful car companies… (made successful by the American company… Ford)… anyways… TaTa himself, the big cheese if you will, is something like 71 years old… and he isn’t grooming anyone for his job. Many of the business decisions and the direction that his company takes is because of his own personal initiative. I’m wondering how well the company will do when he either retires or dies. Both of which could happen within the next 10 years (realistically). I’m wondering if he’s pushing the BB through just based on the fact that if the Indian Gov. goes against him… they will be starting a mini-war with arguably the most powerful man in their economy.