India’s Home Ministry said that the Canadian maker of the smart phones had agreed to an interim arrangement for lawful interception of its messenger services and vowed to provide a final solution by January.

"Accordingly, the Blackberry messenger services will continue to be available in the meantime," it added. However, it remained unclear what resolution both the parties had come up over encrypted corporate e-mails.

Officials at the RIM, whose competitive edge rests on ensuring security to its global users, were unavailable for comment.

Earlier, the Canadian company said in a statement that it is optimistic about reaching a final solution with Indian regulators, adding that it had not changed the security architecture for corporate e-mail and that it does not make special deals on access with individual countries.

India, citing national security concerns, had threatened to ban the BlackBerry's email and messenger services if RIM failed to come up with tools by the end of August to monitor the service.

In August, the country also vowed to test methods and review the situation towards the end of October and gave RIM a 60-day reprieve to figure out a plan.

Since then, the Indian authorities are testing the solutions offered by RIM to access the BlackBerry messenger and corporate emails. The government already has access to monitor Internet, voice calls and short-messaging services on the BlackBerry smart phones.

A source revealed that at the moment, security agencies are getting manual printouts of chat messages within four to five hours of placing their requirements with RIM, adding that once it gets automated access, it could track chat messages on a real-time basis.