World class #vendors to be recognised at #WVA12

Calling all telecom hardware and software companies. Entries for the 2012 World Vendor Awards are now open!

The third annual World Vendor Awards build of the success of 2010 and 2011, recognising excellence and innovation amongst the companies driving forwards the global telecom industry.

For 2012 we have a new look, new venue and most importantly a thoroughly refreshed list of categories, recognising the big issues including cloud, small cells, and revenue assurance.

The World Vendor Awards are a unique proposition, the only awards aimed solely at telecom vendors, recognising their successes and most importantly using the power of Total Telecom to promote this success to a global audience of telecom operators and service providers, the buyers of your equipment and services.

This year we are looking for even more entries, from even more companies, those who think they can do as well or better than Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Comviva, Ciena, and IMIMobile, to name just 5 of last years winners.

Now is the time to get writing, so visit the website www.worldvendorawards.com to view the categories and download the brochure.

And remember, if the successes of telecoms hardware and software companies matter to you, why not talk to us about sponsoring the 2012 awards. You will not only benefit from positioning your company as a leader in the sector, but will benefit from a fantastic marketing campaign that will position your brand to the entire global telecom industry - have a look at last years Winners Brochure to get more of an idea of who has been involved.

Finally, keep up to date with the latest in the vendor community by joining our LinkedIn group, World Class Vendors and if you are Tweeting about the awards, use the hashtag #WVA12

Who are you - #Telecom User Survey

Total Telecom User Survey: You know who you are (we hope), but we're not so sure and so we are asking you to complete our user survey.

Total Telecom generates visits from around 100,000 global telecom professionals every month. Many of you are registered users of the website and so we know who you are, but some people visit without having registered for our newsletter, to download a white paper or view older content, and that's one of the reasons for us to do user surveys.

We also like to ask questions about your interests and your views, and that helps us to understand they type of information and survey's we can generate that might interest you. You will notice that much of this years survey focuses on mobile issues, and this will help us frame the agenda for Total Telecom Wireless World that we will launch in 2012.

As a thank you for completing the survey, we are offering everyone who participate a 10% discount on attending our forthcoming Total Telecom World conference. As the survey should only take a couple of minutes, that's virtually Money for Nothing!

Please take a couple of minutes to complete the survey.

Image Credit: jscreationzs

SaaS is old hat - LaaS is the next big thing in #cloud

Would you bet against Amazon hitting the big time with its forthcoming library in the cloud, as reported recently by the WSJ?

The Next Web also reported on this and said it would be Netflix for books, which surely makes it library as a cloud service or LaaS (remember you heard it here first!)

Whether we're going to see lots of the cloud players promoting Library as a Service is yet to be seen, but you could always ask them at Total Telecom's Next Generation Cloud Service breakfast on the 6th December...

The #smartphone myth?

Gartner has reported that Smartphone sales continue to rocket (Total Telecom+ Sept 2011) with a rise of 74% year-on-year, and this clearly adds credence to the assertion of SK Telecom that free smartphone apps may place a threat to IMS based services offered by mobile carriers - see Roy Rubenstein's article "Multi tasking"

However SMS Marketing company Tatango have put out the fancy infographic shown here

showing that the main use of such devices continues to be text messaging and photographs.

You may well argue that it's a tremendous success that social networking, gaming, and downloading apps have all been listed as uses of smartphones by consumers, but it will be interesting to see how things pan-out as operators move away from diets of all you can eat bandwidth.

It will be interesting to hear from people like Alex Musil of Shazam and Marc Anné (VP Customer Insight & Advocacy) of Orange Business Services at Total Telecom World as they talk about some of the issues surrounding this subject as well as Olivier Baujard – CTO – Deutsche Telekom Group whose keynote presentation is entitled The Smartphone Challenge

The #socialmedia impact

As the telecom sector is such a huge user of social media and vital to everyone else's use, these slides should be of great interest. There are an enourmous number of facts and figures here, but it's worth spending time to look through....

Social media around the world 2011

Some of these issues will be raised at Total Telecom World in November where Olivier Baujard, CTO of Deutsche Telekom Group is going to talk about the impact of Smartphones, and there will also be a panel discussion on Day 2 focusing on "is the future of social media a threat to telecom operators" featuring:

• Axel Haentjens – VP Marketing – Orange Business Services


• Alex Musil – EVP Product Marketing – Shazam


• Ashwin Jaiswal – Head - IT Business Consulting & Practice – Reliance Communications

To find out more about attending, download the brochure

PCCW Global Support Total #Telecom World

PCCW Global have become the latest organisation to offer their support as a sponsor of the new strategic conference, Total Telecom World.

They join a raft of great industry names, including Citycell, Interoute, LogMeIn, Orange Business Services, Qiwi, Tata Communications, and Tektronix who are sponsoring the inaugural conference to be held at prestigous One Whitehall Place on the 7 & 8 November 2011.

Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global will be one of a stellar line up of speakers. You can meet them all by downloading the conference brochure.

This years conference coincides by date with the 13th annual World Communication Awards, which take place nearby at the London Hilton on Park Lane. Many of the 600 senior executives who attend the WCA will also be at Total Telecom World, so make sure you don't miss out on the limited places available by booking today.

World Class Telecom Countries (and Companies...)

This years World Communication Awards (WCA) shortlist comprises 86 contenders, they represent 49 companies, themselves ultimately part of 44 brands. This in itself is an impressive representation of the breadth of the WCA, but almost pales into insignificance when you see the immense scale of their global coverage. The shortlist includes no less than 26 countries, whilst the original entries included more than 40 countries.

Countries who entered the WCA

So join us to celebrate the companies and countries making a splash at this years awards, from CVT in Cape Verde to Smart Communications in the Philippines and from Roshan in Afghanistan to Telmex in Mexico - well done to you all. The 26 countries are below. Karim Khoja, CEO of Roshan will be one of the speakers at Total Telecom World on the 7-8 November 2011.

Image created by Wordle - see the original here

Enterprise users name their favourites

The shortlist is out for the Users Choice category at this years World Communication Awards. All those who have made the shortlist deserve recognition as this is genuinely the category where the winner is chosen by enterprise users of telecom services, based on extensive research by Total Telecom and our partners at Ocean82

So well done to:

AT&T

Cable & Wireless Worldwide

Etisalat

Global Crossing

Orange Business Services

SingTel

Telefonica

Telmex

Verizon Business

To find out who wins, join us at the awards dinner on the 7 November.

You can gain more insight into why Orange Business Services made the shortlist by listening to their VP Customer Insight & Advocacy, Marc Anné, who will be speaking on The Customer Experience track at Total Telecom World.

More information about the users choice methodology is available here.

45 Players in the Game

The shortlist is out for the 2011 World Communication Awards (#WCA11) with 45 companies making it through to the final round, with the winners being revealed at the awards dinner in London on the 7 November.

We were delighted to see strong performances from the likes of Orange and BT, but even more exciting is to see AT&T, UPC and Vodafone on the shortlist.

We wish them all well for the awards and hope to see them at the awards dinner.

To view the full shortlist and to book your table visit www.worldcommsawards.com or scan the QR code below: