A strategic tie up between Olive Telecom and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has been accounted. Olive Telecom is a leading Convergence Solutions Device Developer in the market and it has tied up with BSNL who to offer the 3G embedded Zipbook V-X108. This Zipbook would be bundled with the 3G connectivity from BSNL across India.

Powered by Intel Pentium N450 processor, the Olive Zipbook would operate on windows 7 OS and offer Windows Works, Security essentials and Windows Live.  The Zipbooks aims to offer the customer a powerful computing machine and an ideal mobile broadband experience.

An attractive package of free 6GB download per month for three months is what is available to the customers as a package.

The Chairman of Olive Telecom has commented on the new service stating “Our endeavor has always been to provide the consumer with on the move connectivity solutions. We have partnered with leading distributors and resellers to penetrate deeper into the Indian market. We believe that the market has immense potential and thus we are firming up our presence and have aggressive plans to reach out to customers across several touch points in the region. I am sure this association will go a long way and will further strengthen our position in the Indian market.”

This Zipbook is now available only for Rs 20,999/- and comes with a 1.3 mega pixel camera. This Zipbook would be available across the Karnataka region in all leading stores.

Several other futuristic, cutting edge products too have been showcased by the company like cell phones starting at Rs 999 which include touch screen phones, dual power hybrid phones, triple sim phones, clamshell phones, slider phones, candy bar phones and others.  WCDMA, GSM and CDMA and mobile broadband access phones, Smartphone, advanced data modems, mobile computing devices are just some of the products that are part of the new Olive Convergence portfolio.

The General Manager (S & M-CM), Karnataka circle for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Mr. N. Chandrashekara added “We are pleased to partner with Olive telecommunication in providing 3G solutions through their innovatively designed 3G Zipbook.”

British telecom czar Vodafone Group is leaving no stone unturned in its effort to avoid the Rs 12,000 crore unforeseen tax burden. Earlier, Bombay High Court had ruled against Vodafone in its appeal against the Indian tax authorities, saying that the Vodafone-Hutchison deal is taxable. Vodafone had bought 67% controlling stake in Hutchison Essar Ltd (HEL) by buying out the shares of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecom in 2007.

The company maintains that it is not liable to pay tax on the transaction. A statement issued by Vodafone, disclosing the appeal filed in SC, points to the firm stand taken by the company in this regard. It said, “The appeal challenges the recent High Court judgment on the issue of jurisdiction. Vodafone remains convinced that there is no tax to pay on the Hutchison transaction and we will continue to defend this position vigorously.”

Vodafone argues that since the transaction took place outside the country and the two parties involved are not based in India, the transaction doesn’t invite tax liabilities. However, the Indian tax authorities had raised the issue in 2007, issuing show cause notice, saying that the company should have deducted the tax amount before the payout to Hutchison. In the petition filed by Vodafone against this notice in Bombay High Court, the Court ruled that the Income Tax department has jurisdiction in levying tax on the transaction as it involved indirect transfer of Indian assets, which accrue revenue in India. The Court has allowed Vodafone to argue its case before the IT department on the penalty imposed, as the company was genuinely not aware of the tax liabilities at the time of the deal.

Though Vodafone is the first company to bear the brunt of the scrutiny of tax authorities, taxation experts say that hundreds of similar cross-border transactions have taken place in the past seven years. SSN Moorthy, Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes had briefed media persons on Monday that officials are already investigating such deals.

In India’s only event on Green Telecom, the 2nd International conference Green Telecom India 2010, a controversy enlivened the participants when the issue of high level of radiation and pollution from equipments and telecom towers were discussed.

Rajiv Mehrotra, the president of Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association (TEMA), questioned the foreign manufacturers and their policies of implementing low levels of radiation for their equipments in their countries and why the same technology was not implemented for the products being sold in India.

As per international data as much as 2.8mn tones out of the 3.8mn tones of global pollution was generated from India also even though India has lesser mobile phone subscribers. The arguments of the TEMA chairman were later opposed by Rajan Mathew, director-general of Cellular Operators Association of India.

Rajiv Mehrotra said “One telecom tower company uses two billion liters of diesel. In the West they do not radiate at such high power in the tower. One base station leaves 60 tons of carbon dioxide a year.  The numbers already installed spew 6mn tons of CO2 every year.  More cells, more noise and more radiation”.  He also stated that the cell phones and towers would be reaching close to 6 lakh villages in the near future.

His other remarks about sparrows being the victims of the radiation from these telecom towers also caused a lot of uproar in the audience.

Rajan Mathew, director-general of Cellular Operators Association of India, said in a joint study of EMF of telecom equipment conducted by IIT Madras, telecom operators and Madurai Engineering college is 100 locations, it has been found that in each of these sites, the level was just a thousand part of what was mandated by the International standards. He also concluded that since the telecom industry formed just half a per cent of the ICT industry total, the pollution levels could not be this appalling.

As one of the main sources of communication, Mobile phones are being views as causing uneven impact on pollution according to Mathew. Another reason that has been forcing mobile phone operators to install more cell sites was the availability of limited spectrum in India when compared to most of the developed countries.

The Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer, Ericsson is declining to play ball with the Department of Telecom (DoT) by defying its directive to share source code, reports The Financial Express. However, the world’s largest telecom equipment maker is confident of arriving at an amicable agreement with the Indian telecom authorities without compromising its business in India.

“We are trying to cooperate as much as we can with the Indian government to show what we have and what we can do (over the issue of security). We are talking to the government and the idea is to have a balanced approach that would accommodate both security concerns and business objectives,” said Hans Vestberg, Ericsson’s global president & CEO.

The government security agencies had earlier raised security concerns with imported telecom equipments over the possibility of embedded malware and spyware. This had prompted DoT to revise its rules, making it mandatory for equipment vendors to share source code and design details with the government. The amendment in rules also includes imposing heavy penalty on telecom operators and equipment providers in case of security breach.

The telecom equipment vendors are up in arms against this amendment citing infringement of intellectual property rights as impediment to sharing source code. With the 3G rollout looming large, the Prime Minster’s Office has intervened in the issue. PMO has directed DoT to revert to previous rules for the moment and has given DoT two months to work out an acceptable solution with the vendors.

In 3G equipment order scene, Chinese vendors are giving a tough competition to European telecom equipment manufacturers like Ericsson and Nokia Siemens with their rock-bottom prices that are almost 40% lower. The majority of 3G equipment orders already placed by the two operators Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices went to Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE.

Despite these developments, Mr. Vestberg is resolute on his stand. “We are present in over 100 countries across the globe and we haven’t faced such security issues anywhere else.”