System integration company Teracom recently said it has bagged a Rs 40 crore order from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for supply of 3G data cards supporting data speeds of 3.6 to 7.2 Mbps.

“Teracom has bagged an order of Rs 40 crore and has been declared the winner of an open tender for providing the 3G data card to BSNL. The total quantity will be 2.25 lakh for USB (dongle type) data cards,” the company said in a statement.

Teracom’s R&D team has developed the high speed, advanced 3G data cards at an extremely low-cost, the statement said.  We are at a very advanced stage to supply these dongles to other telecom operators too, Puneet Jain, senior vice president (corporate business) of Teracom said.

S Tel, the GSM mobile service provider today announced the launch of its mobile service in Orissa telecom circle with exiting two lowest tariff plans, one is Pay Per Second and second is All@50 paisa,wherein S tel mobile service subscribers can make call Local and STD calls at 1paisa oer second and 50 paisa per min respectively. S Tel GSM service now available in 11 towns of Orissa circles including the state capital Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Berhampur, Chhatrapur, Pipili, Jatani, Khurda, Aska and Nimapada. Beyond

S Tel Pvt Ltd, a joint venture between Siva Group (formerly Sterling Infotech Group) and BMIC Limited, a subsidiary of Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) begin its GSM mobile service on 17th December  from Himachal Pradesh and according to the company with they will launch the same in Bihar with in next few days. Batelco has 49 per cent stake in S Tel and the Siva group holds 51 per cent stake. The company already commenced its GSM operations in Himachal Pradesh and now in Orissa telecom circles. S Tel has UAS licenses for 6 telecom circles, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar & Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East.

Sppeking on the launch of GSM service in Orissa, P Swaminathan, Director, S Tel said “By the end of 2010, we are aiming to cover all urban towns in Orissa and 60 per cent of the state’’s rural population. We are going to share the passive infrastructure in 900 telecom towers with the other cellular operators in the state”

Sanjib Swain, COO of S Tel’s Orissa circle stated, “From the day of launch, S Tel’s services will be available in 11 towns of Orissa including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Berhampur, Chhatrapur, Pipili, Jatani, Khurda, Aska and Nimapada. Beyond this, we will also be present in over 3000 villages of the state.”

To cater to the needs of  Orissa subscribers , S Tel launches tariffs that aspire to make its subscribers’s life simple since they are easy to understand and transparent with no hidden charges. The operatopr launched two most preferred tariff plans which will charge the consumer @ 1 paisa/ second and 50 paisa/ minute respectively, both for STD and Local outgoing calls. Both the plans come with a special benefit of 60 minutes of free local calls per month for a period of 3 months. In addition, to sweeten the tariff the company has announced 3 Special Tariff Vouchers (STVs) of Rs. 9, Rs. 149 and Rs. 1499. On availing these, the consumer will gain 60 minutes of free outgoing local calls to any network per day for a day, month and year respectively. These have been offered by the company to appeal to a wide audience with light, moderate and heavy mobile usage.

The S Tel customer care number for Orissa circle is 9132012345 or 1212 from S Tel.

New Delhi: Transcend has announced the release of new MP330 digital music player, which is 83mm by 25.5mm by 11.5mm and weighs just 25 grams. Besides its sleek looks and digital music playback capabilities, the MP330 also doubles as a portable storage device as it has a built-in USB connector. The MP330 operates just like a USB flash drive, allowing users to transfer files.

“The MP330 is a versatile digital music player with support for newer file formats such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) as well as MP3, WMA, WAV, and even WMA-DRM10 protected music files. Besides featuring a high signal-to-noise ratio of over 90 decibel to deliver superior audio output quality, the MP330 provides seven advanced equalizer effects to choose from, including a special user-customizable option that allows music playback to be tailored to match specific music tastes and styles,” said Austin Huang, Regional Head – Sales, SAARC and APAC, Transcend.

MP330 also features an extra bright easy-to-read OLED display. The player’s line-in feature can be used to record music from an external source such as a CD player, while its A-B repeat, variable track playback speeds, and advanced voice recorder serve as excellent tools whether at work, at school or anywhere. The MP330 also includes an FM radio and sing-along synchronized lyrics display with support for 14 different languages.

The player is currently available in three capacities, 2GB (Rs. 2500), 4GB (Rs. 3000) and 8GB (Rs. 4000). The player is available in black and white color and comes with a warranty of two years.

Helsinki (Finland): Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson has unveiled its new X10 flagship phone, its first model to be loaded with Google’s Android operating system. However, the company said that the phone will not hit the market until early next year.

The X10 will have a four inch-wide touch screen, will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor and come with an 8.1 megapixel camera, according Reuters. Sony Ericsson’s current top model Satio, with a 12 megapixel camera, has just gone on sale and the announcement could hurt sales in the key sales period ahead of year-end holidays. “I think some consumers will think about waiting until the first quarter to get their hands on the X10 rather than get a Satio for Christmas,” said Gartner’s Analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Loss-making Sony Ericsson, the world’s fourth largest handset maker, has suffered since 2008 from a lack of attractive high-end models in its offering, and saw overall third-quarter sales shrink 45 percent year-on-year. Android has gained a lot of traction this year as handset vendors look for ways to beat Apple’s iPhone. Recently, Motorola announced that it is all set to launch its Droid phone on November 6, which comes with the Google’s operating system.

The state-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will cover all urban areas in the northeastern region through its third generation (3G) platform, a next generation mobile communications systems, company officials have said.

“For rural areas, WiMAX and WLL EVDO (wireless broadband services) would be introduced very shortly, these services are also more or less similar to 3G,” said BSNL general manager of operations Deb Kumar Chakraborty.

He was addressing reporters in Agartala during the launch of a set of 3G standards defined by the International Telecommunication Union in Tripura and Meghalaya simultaneously Saturday evening.

“BSNL has planned to cover 751 cities by the 3G services by March. The next generation mobile communications systems so far have been launched in 113 cities, including Guwahati and Gangtok,” Chakraborty said.

BSNL, the world’s seventh largest telecom operator, is the first company along with the other state-owned operator, Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL), to launch 3G services in India.

“3G services are not merely targeted at the elite class, but everyone. The tariff is affordable. Subscribers can make a local video call at Rs 1.50 per minute and long distance video call at Rs 2.50 per minute. Data access rate is only 1 paisa per 10 kilobyte,” Chakraborty added.

Addressing reporters in Shillong, BSNL chief general manager Vinod Kumar said the 3G mobile services would be provided for both postpaid and prepaid categories.

“3G telephony would help enhance efficiency in e-governance and competitiveness in the information technology and BPO segments,” Kumar said.

Tripura Industries and Commerce Minister Jitendra Chowdhury said at the 3G launch in Agartala that the service would facilitate economic growth and help the government to provide better services to the people.

source: tech2

Google plans to launch an online store to deliver electronic books to any device with a Web browser, threatening to upset a burgeoning market for dedicated e-readers dominated by Amazon’s Kindle. The Web search giant said on Thursday it would launch Google Editions in the first half of next year, initially offering about half a million e-books in partnership with publishers with whom it already cooperates where they have digital rights. Readers will be able to buy e-books either from Google directly or from other online stores such as Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com. Google will host the e-books and make them searchable. “We’re not focused on a dedicated e-reader or device of any kind,” Tom Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, told journalists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The announcement comes a week after Amazon said it would introduce the Kindle into 100 countries outside the United States, pushing its leading position in a small but fast-growing market in which its competitors include Sony’s Reader. Technology research firm Forrester expects about 3 million e-readers to be sold in the United States this year, from a previous base of about 1 million, helped by lower prices, more content and better distribution. Top U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble has been reported to be planning an entry into the e-reader market to complement a large online bookstore it launched in July. Microsoft had also been rumored to be planning a reading device, but Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said last week it had no need, since it already supplied the software that runs the most popular device for electronic reading, the PC. Google Editions will allow Google to make money for the first time out of one of its book ventures – which also include a controversial project to scan and index tens of millions of books through partnerships with libraries. Google will share revenue with publishers, and also with online retailers in cases where readers buy Google-hosted books through a retailer’s site. It already partners with publishers to make their physical books searchable and available for sale. Turvey said Google would give publishers 63 percent of revenues and keep 37 percent for itself where it sold e-books directly to consumers. In cases where e-books were bought through other online retailers, publishers would get 45 percent and most of the remaining 55 percent would go to the retailer, with a small share for Google, he said. Readers will be able to access e-books they have bought through Google on any device including PCs, laptops, netbooks and smartphones like Apple’s iPhone through their gmail account, Google said. The device need not be connected in order to read the book, after it has been accessed once, and payment can be made to Google through its online payment processing system Google Checkout, which stores users’ details in a personal account.
Google is also trying to settle a lawsuit in the United States with U.S. publishers and authors over its Google Books project, in which it has already scanned about 10 million books through partnerships with libraries and plans to scan many more. Google wants to improve its Web search by including the bulk of the world’s knowledge that is contained in books by indexing the books and displaying varying amounts in Web search results, depending on whether the books are in or out of copyright. In a long-running dispute, the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild have sued Google for scanning some in-copyright books without permission from rights holders. The parties have now reached a settlement agreement but have been sent back by a U.S. court to revise some details, and are due to file a revised version on Nov. 9. Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond told reporters: “We are very comfortable and confident that it will go through in some form.” The settlement only applies to the United States but has sparked fierce criticism from some parties in Europe, notably from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as it covers European books in U.S. libraries scanned in the United States. Drummond said excluding those books from the settlement was not being debated. “European books will be part of the settlement,” he said.

Google plans to launch an online store to deliver electronic books to any device with a Web browser, threatening to upset a burgeoning market for dedicated e-readers dominated by Amazon’s Kindle. The Web search giant said on Thursday it would launch Google Editions in the first half of next year, initially offering about half a million e-books in partnership with publishers with whom it already cooperates where they have digital rights. Readers will be able to buy e-books either from Google directly or from other online stores such as Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com. Google will host the e-books and make them searchable. “We’re not focused on a dedicated e-reader or device of any kind,” Tom Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, told journalists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The announcement comes a week after Amazon said it would introduce the Kindle into 100 countries outside the United States, pushing its leading position in a small but fast-growing market in which its competitors include Sony’s Reader. Technology research firm Forrester expects about 3 million e-readers to be sold in the United States this year, from a previous base of about 1 million, helped by lower prices, more content and better distribution. Top U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble has been reported to be planning an entry into the e-reader market to complement a large online bookstore it launched in July. Microsoft had also been rumored to be planning a reading device, but Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said last week it had no need, since it already supplied the software that runs the most popular device for electronic reading, the PC. Google Editions will allow Google to make money for the first time out of one of its book ventures – which also include a controversial project to scan and index tens of millions of books through partnerships with libraries. Google will share revenue with publishers, and also with online retailers in cases where readers buy Google-hosted books through a retailer’s site. It already partners with publishers to make their physical books searchable and available for sale. Turvey said Google would give publishers 63 percent of revenues and keep 37 percent for itself where it sold e-books directly to consumers. In cases where e-books were bought through other online retailers, publishers would get 45 percent and most of the remaining 55 percent would go to the retailer, with a small share for Google, he said. Readers will be able to access e-books they have bought through Google on any device including PCs, laptops, netbooks and smartphones like Apple’s iPhone through their gmail account, Google said. The device need not be connected in order to read the book, after it has been accessed once, and payment can be made to Google through its online payment processing system Google Checkout, which stores users’ details in a personal account.

Google is also trying to settle a lawsuit in the United States with U.S. publishers and authors over its Google Books project, in which it has already scanned about 10 million books through partnerships with libraries and plans to scan many more. Google wants to improve its Web search by including the bulk of the world’s knowledge that is contained in books by indexing the books and displaying varying amounts in Web search results, depending on whether the books are in or out of copyright. In a long-running dispute, the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild have sued Google for scanning some in-copyright books without permission from rights holders. The parties have now reached a settlement agreement but have been sent back by a U.S. court to revise some details, and are due to file a revised version on Nov. 9. Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond told reporters: “We are very comfortable and confident that it will go through in some form.” The settlement only applies to the United States but has sparked fierce criticism from some parties in Europe, notably from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as it covers European books in U.S. libraries scanned in the United States. Drummond said excluding those books from the settlement was not being debated. “European books will be part of the settlement,” he said.

A neat looking PMP with a garish and overdone mock chrome finish on the rear that made me go “ugh”! The front is neat though with the buttons resembling a cellphone layout, albeit much larger. There is a centre button for play/pause and four directional keys around it. A tiny menu button is also provided to the right of these buttons. The centre button is finished in matte-silver and this along with the chrome rim around the buttons adds some colour to an already colourful black and navy blue body. The centre button has a rubbery feedback. Build quality is good but it looks like everything was put together in a hurry especially considering the misalignment of the USB port. There’s a switch on the player that selects between playback and USB mode.

Surprisingly, for such a small screen, the video format support is extensive, especially compared to the Philips Aria. Quality of the display is so-so; brightness level is good. Music performance is a little better although we found the bass unfocussed and tending towards looseness, the SR 225 is known for clean bass and the fact that the bass seemed muddy is testament to this players’ performance, or rather the lack of it. Mid-range is also weak – definitely not its forte. The treble extends rather cleanly although is sharply rolled off and certain instruments and sounds that extend into the higher frequencies beyond the 8 KHz range. In fact some piano accompaniments around the 4 KHz mark also seemed to be missing – this is really part of the lower-range of treble and this is pretty unacceptable for a PMP of any sort, irrespective the price. At Rs. 2,400 the Apacer AU824 is a little too light on performance and features to warrant approval, though it is the cheapest player we tested and many who want affordability will want to check it out.

Introduction of New Broadband Rural Plans Under USOF Scheme

BSNL has introduce new Rural Broadband under the USOF scheme for provision of broadband connectivity in rural and remote areas with no registration Security deposit and installation fees.

Note: -

1. All other taxes shall be charges as per prevailing rate as notified by Govt. of India from time to time.

2. BSNL will not charge for Registration, Security Deposit and Installation.

3. No charges for Type I modem.

4. If PCs/laptops/computing devices are Purchased through BSNL, rebate of Rs 4500/- will be given in original cost.

5. The above concessions/tariff will be applicable to first 31 customers w.e.f 20.01.09, taking broadband connections in rural areas.

6. All other terms and conditions will remain the same.

Spark Mobiles, part of UAE based Spark Group of Companies announced their foray into the Indian market while also appointing multi-lingual actor R. Madhavan as the official brand ambassador for their new range of mobile handsets that should hit India before 2009 ends. Their handsets will be aimed at consumers across all segments.

Elaine Ester Roach, Chairperson, Spark Group of Companies, said, “We have a strong base and a respectable market share in the United Arab Emirates, and are now eying India as an important potential market for our growth strategy. We have a demonstrable past of challenging established brands, and are confident our handsets would be a hit amongst Indian audiences. We are launching Indestructible mobiles for Indestructible Indians”.

The company has also claimed that the handsets due for launch are not just water resistant but Water Proof as well. They’re being marketed as ‘Indestructible Mobiles’. With further regards to their rugged features they’ve apparently been tested for shock resistance by frequent drops as well as by running a 4×4 vehicle over them. There was also mention of the battery being able to provide a One Month stand by time and having a manually workable charger (we saw that in action).