Reliance to Offer BlackBerry Services in India

Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Research in Motion (RIM), today announced the launch of the innovative BlackBerry wireless solutions for the first time on CDMA network in India. Available across 10,000 towns and 3 lakh villages, this will make it the most widely connected BlackBerry service in the country.

Being the first to launch the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone in India, Reliance Communication will now be able to provide its customers with the more data-efficient CDMA and GSM network that will also deliver high Internet speed and offer international roaming, enhancing the productivity of both enterprise and professionals on the go. Reliance is well poised to extend business applications through BlackBerry as is.

The BlackBerry 8830 is equipped with a full QWERTY keypad and aside from providing users with high-speed email and messaging capabilities, it’s also equipped with a built-in GPS navigator and trackball (Pearl) navigation feature. It has 64MB of inbuilt memory and provisions for expansion through microSD cards. The 8830 also has a media player for video and audio files, and supports video streaming. Reliance intends to take the BlackBerry solution a step further and provide customers with other solutions such as Internet-based online trading and Bloomberg Anywhere.

On the occasion of the launch, Prakash Bajpai, President, RCOM, said, “As the first player to offer BlackBerry World Edition smartphone in India, we are confident that our network will offer a superior value proposition to professionals on the move. Reliance is committed to provide world class Solutions on BlackBerry Enterprise server and we will take BlackBerry 'BeyondEmail'. Now for the first time in India we are launching BlackBerry service with applications such as Internet-based online trading and Blackberry on prepaid . Many more such solutions will follow suit."

Norm Lo, Vice President, Asia-Pacific, RIM added, “BlackBerry smartphones are designed to provide people with the best integrated mobile experience for email, phone, web browsing and other corporate and personal applications. RIM is very pleased to be working with RCOM to further drive the adoption of BlackBerry smartphones and mobile applications in India.”


Models launched include: BlackBerry Pearl (Rs 24,990), BlackBerry 8703e (Rs 22,990), BlackBerry Curve (Rs 24,990) and BlackBerry 8830 World Edition (Rs 33,990).

The BlackBerry 8830 and 8703e handsets will be available in 16 cities to start with, and will be expanded to other cities in phase II. RCOM has launched BlackBerry Pearl on its GSM network in a phase-wise manner, starting with Indore.