Orange named Best Global Operator

What a great night last night turned out to be. More than 500 of the telecom industries elite gathered at the Hilton on Park Lane, London to see this years winners of the World Communication Awards unveiled.

Guest speakers included Pen Hadow, the arctic environmentalist and explorer, and Krishnan Guru Murthy proved to be an excellent MC and demonstrated why he has appeared as a guest on comedy quiz shows including 'Have I got news for you' (quote of the night, KGM "I love an awards ceremony where I can call Bill Gates and Steve Jobs losers")



After all the glitz, Orange and Bharti Airtel came out as the big winners with two trophies each.
The full list was as follows:
Best Brand: Bharti Airtel Ltd.
Best Content Service: MINICK Group
Best Customer Care: BT Group
Best Managed Service: NTT Communications
Best Mobile Operator : Bharti Airtel Ltd.
Best New Service : SpinVox
Best Operator in a Developing Market: Afsat Communications
Best Project Management: Orange Business Services
Best Technology Foresight : ip.access
The Convergence Award: BT 21CN
Best Changemaker: Vishvas Sethi - Botswana Telecommunications Corporation
Best Wholesale Carrier: TeliaSonera International Carrier
Best Global Operator : Orange Business Services
Most influential person: Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner, EU

Once again the WCA proved to be a night to really unite the big hitters with a range of senior telco execs including Osamu Inoue of NTT, Barbara Dalibard of Orange, Malin Frenning of TeliaSonera, Ofer Gneezy of iBasis, and Daniel Kurgan of Belgacom to name just five of those present.

2008 is the 10th year of the WCA, so watch this space to keep up with the plans...

WCA frenzy

Less than two weeks now to the 2007 World Communication Awards. If you haven't booked your seats yet, there is still some availability, but with more than 500 confirmed attendee's we are selling out fast. (Book on the WCA website, or call Joanna Zych on 44 20 7827 1215).

This year more than 50 companies have made it to the shortlist, and not just the big names (although BT, Orange, Verizon et al are all represented), but we are really pleased to see great entries from companies as diverse, both in nature and geography, as Bharti Airtel, Jasper Wireless, AES, and JSC Kazakhtelecom - check out the full list.

Finally remember this year is a milestone for the WCA, it's our last year in single figures! In 2008 the World Communication Awards will be ten, having been launched in 1999 at World Telecom in Geneva, we're starting to think about it already - shouldn't you be!

Vodafone cheer

So the mobile giant has reported good first-half financials, not least in view of the 48% rise in overall group mobile data revenues by 48.5% to GBP1 billion. The results even managed to impress the analysts, including noted industry sceptic Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysis. But after picking the results apart he concludes that most of the data revenue must have come from laptops and BlackBerry usage: ie data pipe revenue has grown while revenue from "content" has actually fallen.

Cyrus Mewawalla from WesthallCapital waxed lyrical about the results, meanwhile, and said Arun Sarin has managed to drop the emphasis on mobile in favour of "converged services".
"Vodafone now ranks along side Telefonica as one of the few European large cap telco growth stories," he comments.

Erskine offski?

A little bird says Telefonica O2 CEO Peter Erskine will shake off the golden handcuffs next year, two years after the Spanish operator bought UK-based mobile operator O2.

Total Telecom magazine

It's countdown to press day for the last issue of TTm this year, would you believe it. Look out for the issue, due out on 1st December, with key analysis of the Korean telecoms market, a delve into customer care, a good hard look at some of those vendor financials, and comments from our resident tech briefing expert, Roy Rubenstein, on major security issues.

"The airwaves know no borders"

If the European Commission gets its way, the EU telecoms market will come under the control of a single regulatory body in the next couple of years. As part of its Telecoms Reform Package, unveiled Tuesday, the Commission has proposed that a new European Telecom Market Authority be created to oversee the industry, or, as a statement from the Commission put it "support" national telecoms regulators. It remains to be seen just how the national regulators in the 27 member states will react to that "support", should the proposals be accepted.

In the manner of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream..." speech, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso waxed lyrical about the proposed reform package. "After all, airwaves know no borders. And the Internet Protocol has no nationality," he gushed.

More information on Total Telecom.

The New Editor's Cut

Welcome to the "New" Editor's Cut. With more contributors and a new location, The Editor's Cut will be home to the observations, over heards, and general views of the editors of Total Telecom.

Watch out for regular postings, or visit the "Old" Editor's Cut for our archive...