The January 31 deadline to allow Indian spook agencies access to snoop on Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry's corporate email service has practically been extended, according to the union telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar.

It may be recalled that India had threatened to ban RIM's BlackBerry service by January 31, if the company failed to give Indian securityu00a0 agencies a solution to enable snooping of its corporate email service.

"India may consider giving some more time to RIM to provide access to monitor corporate emails. Technical teams of RIM and government agencies are still talking. As of now, the company has not provided any solution. We too have not taken any decision so far," he said.

"There is no target date set to resolve the matter," he added, when asked specifically if any fresh deadline has been set for the company.

The matter seems to be fast becoming a prestige issue between the government and RIM after union home minister P Chidambaram recently insisted on Indian security agencies being given access to BlackBerry's corporate email service.

Earlier, RIM's vice president (industry, government and university relations) Robert Crow had told the media that it could not give such access to Blackberry's corporate email service, though it allowed Indian agencies to access its BlackBerry Messenger service.

Incidentally, India is a market that RIM can't afford to ignore. With its nearly 730 million mobile phone users, India happens to be the second largest market for wireless services in the world.

Besides, India's smartphone market is expected to grow from 10 million at present, to about 40 million by the end of 2015, according to an industry forecast by Informa Telecoms & Media.