Blackberry to roll out VSP in India via Movirtu

NEW DELHI: Waterloo-based Blackberry, which is known for high-end security encryption, will roll out its newly acquired technology of Virtual SIM Provisioning (VSP) in the India market by year-end.

The move comes following its acquisition of UK-based virtual identity solutions firm Movirtu.

With Movirtu’s new solution, users can have multiple phone numbers on the same device. Once implemented in India, the consumers will be able to use up to nine mobile numbers through a single SIM card.

Blackberry bought the mobile technology start-up in September 2014 and completed its acquisition in February 2015.

This can be termed as Blackberry’s bounce-back strategy in the backdrop of its declining enterprise business.

The technology will be beneficial in terms of retaining a business and a personal number on a single mobile device, with separate billing for voice, data and messaging usage on each number.

According to Sunil Lalvani, MD, Blackberry India, “The technology will strengthen the environments of bring-your-own device (BYOD) and corporate owned personally enabled (COPE).”

“The acquisition complements BlackBerry’s Secure Work Space, BlackBerry Balance and other partitioning technologies,” he added.

Commenting on the stated time-line to bring VSP in India, Lalvani, said “We plan to launch the service by year-end as we are in the midst of getting some regulatory clearances by the government which is delaying the process.”

“We will be working in conjunction of all the telecom operators for the roll-out in India and are already in talks with the top eight operators for carrying out pilots. Also, we will support the deployment of Movirtu technology by mobile operators on all major smartphone operating systems,” he added.

On being asked about the revenue-sharing model involved, Lalvani quoted charging a nominal amount from the operators for having Blackberry’s VSN into place.

The company has successfully introduced the VSP technology in the African market and plans to roll it in Europe and APAC as well.

Sharing insights on the business the company has done so far, Lalvani highlighted the investments made by Blackberry accompanied by its core strengths. “We made cash investment of $3.2 billion in Q4 FY15 and our software revenue witnessed an increase of 20 percent. With end-to-end security in Blackberry’s DNA, the company stands tall in the backdrop of cyber-attacks like JP Morgan, eBay and Sony,”

“Sixteen out of total G20 governments are secure with our services. Also, 14 out of 14 ministries in Germany rely on Blackberry 10 for their safety requirements,” added Lalvani.

The company also gave a glimpse of their upcoming device ‘Leap’ which will be officially launched next week. The phone has also already been launched in other international markets and has been betted as mid-range device with price tag of $275.

Calling it as a follow-up to Blackberry Z3, Lalvani termed it as phone for ‘the younger professionals’. The India specific pricing details of the phone haven’t been shared yet.