BT to sell BlackBerrys in Europe

BT on Monday struck a deal with Research In Motion to market RIM's BlackBerry mobile e-mail and personal information management system in Europe.

The BlackBerry offers consumers always-on wireless access to their corporate e-mail and data via a handheld with integrated phone, text messaging, browser, calendar and organizer capability.

Two co-branded devices, the 7230 and 7730, will aim to help BT's mobile business customers access e-mail and other corporate data residing on remote corporate servers. Blackberry Enterprise Software works with Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino. Novell's Groupwise is expected to be integrated later this year.

"BT has a large corporate customer base with a strong support infrastructure, and we are very pleased it has chosen to offer BlackBerry to its customers," Larry Conlee, RIM's CEO, said in a statement.

Details on pricing and availability for the service have not yet been released.

Mobile-telephony service providers such as Sprint and T-Mobile are pushing the BlackBerry wireless service in the United States. Recently, RIM took BlackBerry to India through a deal with Indian cellular service firm Airtel.