Bharti Airtel CEO and Joint MD Manoj Kohli was presented with the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year 2009 award by Dr J S Sarma, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. The 10th Annual V&D 100 Awards were announced by Mr. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia, Publisher of Voice&Data here late last evening.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Dr. JS Sarma, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said, “The telecom sector offers both challenges and opportunities. All the links of the value chain have to make the best of the opportunities to let telecom flourish in our country. Common sense and social equity demands that technology should be used to create a digital economy in which all Indians would be able to participate and contribute in the process of economic development, and also share its fruits.”

The jury was headed by Dr. DPS Seth, ex-Member, TRAI and other members included RN Prabhakar, Member, TRAI; Kunal Bajaj, MD, BDA; Deepak Maheshwari, Director Corporate Affairs, Microsoft; Mahesh Uppal, Director, ComFirst; Naresh Ajwani, MD, SV Tel; P Balaji, VP, Marketing and Strategy, Ericsson India; and Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia India.

"India's telecom operators managed to beat the slowdown—one of the very few sectors or industries in the world to do so,” Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia said. “This is also one of the Indian segments that is matching global standards and beating them on innovation, value, and profitability on incredibly low tariffs.”

Mr. Manoj Kohli was honored for making Bharti Airtel a world class telecom company. Airtel crossed the 100 million subscriber mark last year and became the third largest single country mobile services operator in the world. The company beat BSNL for the first time and emerged as the numero uno operator in the V&D Top 10. Under his leadership Airtel focused on rural markets with 60% of its new customers additions coming from the rural area and is now actively expanding overseas.

Receiving the award, Mr. Manoj Kohli, CEO & Joint MD, Bharti Airtel, said, “We are delighted to receive this prestigious award and thank Voice&Data for this honour. Committed to globally benchmarked quality, Bharti Airtel believes in constantly innovating so as to bring the best to our over 100 million customers. I am also personally honoured to be named the Telecom Person of the Year. At Bharti Airtel, we believe in catalyzing national growth through an empowered leadership team and we are committed to take on bigger challenges in future."

One97 Communications - Emerging Company of The Year
One97 Communications developed applications and services in the VAS segment which have now become benchmarks for the domestic and international markets. It was the first company to develop and work on a revenue share model with its customers. One97 has a team of professionally qualified engineers who respond quickly and adapt to the needs of the market.

On receiving this year's Voice & Data Emerging Company Award, One97 Communications Managing Director Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “On being chosen as an emerging company by peers gives us immense pride in what we do. This award will spur all of us at One97 to continue to deliver our very best in the future.”  

Sanjay Swamy Of mChek - Technovator of The Year
Mr. Sanjay Swamy was instrumental in developing and promoting the mChek solution that promises to change the landscape of mobile payments. He used SMS as the platform, thereby increasing the potential reach of mobile payments to hundreds of millions of users, and actually reaching over two million users in a short time through tie-ups with Airtel and other telcos, and financial institutions

"I'm honoured to receive the Technovator of the year award," said Mr. Sanjay Swamy, CEO of mChek. "This award is not just a recognition of the pioneering work of the mChek team; it is also a recognition of the initiative of our key partners - Airtel, Visa and ICICI Bank - and everyone else who shares our vision for enabling mobile payments throughout India."

Nokia – Green Company of The Year
Nokia's initiative of recycling of mobile handsets is expected to contribute towards management of e-waste in a big way. The company kicked off their recycling awareness and take-back campaign and within the first 45 days of its launch, the collection exceeded 3 tonnes of waste including 10,000 handsets. It now intends to extend the campaign to over 15 cities with 1300 recycling bins in the next few months.

The Voice&Data awards were instituted in 2000 to honour leading players in the burgeoning telecom sector. The Voice&Data Telecom Person in the past include Anil Ambani, Dayanidhi Maran, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Srinath N and Sunil Bharti Mittal.

"The telecom sector has been a beacon in dark times. Though the subscriber base will continue to grow faster than other markets, the challenging policy environment and spectrum delays will affect both technology adoption, and revenue growth,” Prasanto K. Roy, Chief Editor of Voice&Data said.

The 2008-09 Indian Telecom Industry survey conducted by the flagship publication for the telecom industry, Voice&Data, covered over 650 equipment and services companies.

Category awards
In addition, 33 awards were presented to 26 companies. Among the winners in multiple categories was Bharti which bagged the Top Telecom Service Provider honour as also for leading in Cellular Services, National Long Distance Telephony and VSATs. Cisco was ranked as the Top Enterprise Equipment Company in addition to topping in Switch, WLAN and Router category.

Public Sector giant BSNL topped in the broadband services based on subscribers as well as Fixed Line services. Reliance Communications topped the broadband services based on revenue and Tata Communications topped the International Long Distance Telephony category.

Nokia emerged as the top Mobile Handset Company and LG Nortel as the top Fixed Wireless Phone Company. In the networking space, Wipro Infotech emerged as the top vendor in 2 categories—Network Integration and Network Management Services. EMC and HCL Comnet emerged as the toppers in Network Storage and Network Security Services.

The other award winners were Arvind Mills (Radio Trunking), UTStarcom (Broadband Infrastructure), Agilent Technologies (T&M), Telecom Turnkey (GTL), Avaya, Sterlite Technologies and Atrie Technology topped the Voice Solutions, Telecom Cables and Modems category respectively.

Tech Mahindra topped the Telecom Software category while Tyco Electronics, Ericsson and Harris Stratex got the recognition for WiMax, Wireless Infrastructure and Structured Cabling respectively.

Polycom, ECI Telecom and OnMobile were awarded for reporting the highest revenues in Audio Video Conferencing, Transmission and Mobile VAS category.

V&D 100 is the most comprehensive annual survey of the Indian telecom services and equipment industries. It is the most trusted and widely used survey for those seeking statistics on Indian telecommunications industry. It is perhaps the only 'single source' of such diverse information.

About CyberMedia
CyberMedia, South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with fifteen publications (including BioSpectrum, Dare, Dataquest, Halsbury’s Law Monthly, Living Digital, PCQuest, Voice&Data and Technology Review) in the information technology, telecom, consumer electronics, biotech and technology areas, and is a media value chain including Internet (www.ciol.com), events, and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), content management and multimedia. 

For more details, please visit: www.cybermedia.co.in or www.ciol.com or www.voicendata.com


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