Volte-face was a term familiar only within the political space in the country. But the culture seems to be spreading its wings with government departments too caving in to the trend. And the latest to join this trend appears to be DoT which has now almost given a clean chit to Blackberry services.

“There is no threat from BlackBerry services,”said telecom secretary Siddharth Behura.“There is no permission needed for starting value-added services. We have not given permission to anybody, we have not disallowed anybody,” he added which left  one wondering to analyse as to why at first place the whole controversy surrounding RIM''s services in the country  assumed prominence for the last few months amidst all the security concerns.

The controversy came in to focus when Tata Teleservices applied for permission to offer the services in the country. The point noteworthy is that Tata Teleservices was the first company which took permission to offer these services. Until then all the operators offered the services without seeking government permission.

But Tata's application suddenly brought an important issue into highlight pertaining to Blackberry services i.e. the data being sent or received from RIM's servers could not be monitored by Indian security agencies as the servers were located outside India as well as the services used advanced encryption codes which were not compatible with those preferred by Indian security agencies.

Subsequently there were series of meetings between government officials and representatives from the Canadian company. Even the Canadian Embassy was reported to be involved in the resolution talks.

One hopes the government does not does another volte-face by saying the statement of the secretary is a personal observation.