Discover the 20 candidates for #WCA14 CEO of the Year and vote for your favourite

The candidates for this years World Communication Awards CEO of the Year are in, and represent a eclectic list of 20 of the most powerful, innovative and outspoken names in global telecoms. Now it's time to decide the winner and that's down to you, but first here's the list and some of those reasons why they all have the X-factor.

• Abdullah Orkun Kaya: TTNET
• Ahmed Mekky: GBI
• Akira Arima: NTT Communications

Akira has already been recognised as a winner this year, being named CEO of Year for the Asia Communication Awards in June, just one of several awards taken by NTT Com - see the roll of honour here 

• Alex J. SInaga: PT Telkomsel

Interviewed at last years Total Telecom Festival

• Chris Wood: WIOCC
• Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: America Movil 
  

Daniel is leading the South American companies battle with the regulators, whilst also battling for control of Telekom Austria

• Ernest L. Cu: Globe Telecom
• Gavin Patterson: BT

Leading BT to reenter the mobile space

• John Legere: T-Mobile US 
  

Sharing his forthright views, especially on the competition!

• Masayoshi Son: Softbank
• Michalis Tsamaz: Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE)
• Napoleon L. Nazareno: Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company
• Nasser Marafih: Ooredoo
• Paul Taylor: Botswana Telecommunications Corporation

Read the interview about transforming the country’s telecom incumbent into a customer centric, world class operator

• Randall Stephenson: AT&T Inc.

Boosting TV and video business

• Saleh Al Abdooli: Etisalat 
  
• Vinod Kumar: Tata Communications Ltd
• Vittorio Colao: Vodafone 

Encouraged by signs of stability in Europe

• Yiannos Michaelides: GO plc, Malta
• Yousuf Abdulla Al-Kubaisi: Ooredoo

CAST YOUR VOTES FOR THE CEO OF THE YEAR

The winner will be announced at the World Communication Awards on the 2 December 2014

Vote NOW

From technological backwater to the world's most important sector #WCA

Total Telecom is moving office, and whilst we cleared boxes and moving piles of rubbish (what happened to the paperless office) we came across our heritage, or to be exact in a cupboard we found an archive of back issues of CommunicationsWeek International and Communications International - the titles that later became Total Telecom.

Amongst the dust stood out an October 1999 issue of CommunicationsWeek International proudly revealing World Communication Awards, names such as Global One, Arbinet Communications, and World Online (ouch!)

the first ever winners of the

Why not revel in some nostalgia (we certainly did) and check out the names and services from the past - whilst trying to explain to the younger members of your team who they were! Remember Arthur Andersen - our headline sponsor in 1999....

Download the PDF here

If you are still working on your participation at this years World Communication Awards and Total Telecom Festival, visit the website for more information: www.worldcommsawards.com

19 World Communication Awards Categories Revealed #WCA14

Entries are open for the 2014 World Communication Awards with a fully refreshed line up of categories. You can download full entry criteria from the website, but for quick reference the line up this year includes:

Best Brand Campaign

Best Customer Care

Best Consumer Service

Best Enterprise Service

Best Small Business Service

The Cloud Infrastructure Award  

The Digital Experience Award

Best Infrastructure Initiative  

Project of the Year  

Best Network Operation Initiative  

The Innovation Award  

The Social Contribution Award

The Users Choice  

The Connected World Initiative  

Best Operator in an Emerging Market

Best Wholesale Carrier

Best Mobile Operator 

Best Global Operator  

CEO of the Year 

Entry deadline this year is Wednesday 9th July with the shortlist announced in September 2014 and the awards ceremony on 2 December 2014 at The Lancaster, London.

Once again, the WCA will form part of the Total Telecom Festival and are delighted to welcome NTT Communications as a Gold Sponsor of this years event. The Festival this year benefits from an exciting initiative to more closely align the conference with the awards in a unique and compelling manner - talk to us to find out more.

If you are interested in options to raise your profile at the World Communication Awards or Total Telecom Festival, download the prospectus.

6 Companies who probably don't remember their first Tweet? #WCA14

Do you remember your first Tweet? Most people probably don't and indeed most companies probably don't, so with a gratuitous link to this years World Communication Awards (entries opened this week) we decided to use Twitters Discover tool to see what the first Tweet was of 6 notable companies - the Best Global Operator finalists from 2013.

So starting at the top, with last year's winner, Orange Business Services, who even in 2009 were concerned by data protection.

Orange have since clearly worked hard at their Twitter account +orangebusiness and have 107,000 followers and according to @tweetstats produce an average 207 tweets per month, getting replies to over 27% of them - clearly the work of a leader!

The first tweets of the rest of the shortlist are in the slidedeck below:

So practising what we preach, what about @totaltelecom? We produced our first Tweet way back in January 2009, proving our cutting edge credentials, beating all of the above bar AT&T, but in classic Total Telecom style, the subject was a less serious "Merry Christmas & Happy New Year"...

GET MORE SERIOUS - ENTER THE 2014 WORLD COMMUNICATION AWARDS

www.worldcommsawards.com 

WCA Winner's Report: Ciena - The Innovation Award 2013

In the build up to the opening of this year's World Communication Awards. We've been speaking to last year's winners to get the inside track about their winning entry. Follow our series of 'Winner's Reports' over the next few weeks.

Next up: Ciena (GeoMesh) - The Innovation Award 2013

Please summarise your winning entry

Ciena’s GeoMesh leverages multiple industry-leading technologies with field-proven pedigrees for robustness and reliability in the areas of optical transport and switching intelligence into a seamless global network solution that addresses current and future global connectivity needs. GeoMesh simplifies the PoP-to-PoP transport layer by leveraging coherent transmission and ROADM-based Optical Bypass, while adding service intelligence and the robustness of an intelligent switching layer, governed by the OneConnect control plane. This unique combination of industry-leading technologies yields global networking solutions that unite submarine and terrestrial networks like never before. For the first time, networks operators can significantly simplify their global network designs overland and undersea, increase network capacity via simple 100 Gb/s channel upgrades, and bolster network resilience, even in the face of inevitable natural and manmade network faults. GeoMesh epitomizes the convergence of submarine and terrestrial network technologies, yielding previously impossible economies of scale across the entire network. GeoMesh has removed the technological barriers that once forced global network operators to design two network types, submarine and terrestrial, and then inefficiently hand off traffic between the two network types. GeoMesh allows network operators for the first time ever to design and build networks that span upwards of 10,000km and even longer, using a common set of technologies operating at 100G rates.

How do you feel your product or service differentiates from its competitors?

The three building block technologies that comprise GeoMesh are all revolutionary technology innovations in their own right. However, what makes GeoMesh truly unique, and provides so numerous coveted benefits to the many tier 1 network operators who have rapidly adopted these technologies, is when they are combined into a single GeoMesh network solution. It is the combined industry-leading hardware and software innovations that make GeoMesh revolutionary and thus unique in the industry with no equivalent offerings from any other network vendor.

What further innovations do you see in the area of your entry in 2014 and beyond?


A significant and growing portion of traffic carried over both submarine and terrestrial networks is cloud computing traffic flowing between large data centers. Now that GeoMesh has successfully united submarine and terrestrial networks to the benefit of both service provider and end users alike, the next targeted innovation is to integrate dynamic bandwidth-on-demand capabilities that maximize end-to-end bandwidth utilization, while enabling innovative new services that differentiate on attributes other than just price. Looking further into the future, SDN and NFV are also additions to the GeoMesh solution that are being investigated.


Want to enter the awards this year? Entries open on May 7th. Keep an eye on the website for further information - www.worldcommsawards.com

Things that eat up the marketing budget: TeliaSonera #WCA

We love TeliaSonera International Carriers promotion of their win at the 2012 World Communication Awards, and picked up a handful of the gold chocolate coins at a recent event.

Of course we were worried that TSIC might be concerned about us sharing this idea with the competition, so we ate the evidence...

TeliaSonera International Carrier were Best Wholesale Carrier at the 2012 World Communication Awards. Entry deadline for 2013 has been extended to 12 July 2013. Find out how to enter at www.worldcommsawards.com 

Have you seen a great WCA novelty? Tell us about it, we'd love to know. Email enquiry@totaltele.com

15 #telecom success stories of 2012 #WCA12

This year fifteen outstanding global telecom companies won eighteen awards at the World Communication Awards in London.

They ranged from the most valuable telecom brand in the world [Total Telecom brand ranking 2012] to emerging market players from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

Along the way a number of other companies were Highly Commended, but all deserve mention for simply making it onto the shortlist.

World Communication Awards 2012 Winners and Finalists from Total Telecom

Next year the World Communication Awards celebrate 15 years as the leading mark of excellence in global telecoms, so why not talk to us about how you can align your brand with the best? Email wca@totaltele.com 

A is for ADVA, B is for BT... Z is for ZTE

It's truly the A-Z of telecoms, we know where all of these companies will be on the 13 November, but what about you?

The 14th annual World Communication Awards takes place on the 13 November 2012, and the Lancaster Hotel, London. There is still time to take your seat, book now at www.worldcommsawards.com 

If these companies, and more, are your customers, partners, competitors or suppliers, there is nowhere better to meet them!

The World Communication Awards are organised by Total Telecom. They coincide with Total Telecom World and the Total Telecom Customer Experience Summit that take place at the same venue on the 13 and 14 November 2012.

Final 2 days of voting #WCA12 CEO of the Year

Who will be your CEO of the Year 2012? You have just 2 days to vote . The winner will be revealed at the World Communication Awards on the 13 November 2012.

VOTE NOW

Whole lot under one roof! #TTW12

The websites have been updated for the three events colocated under the - very large - roof of the Lancaster London this November.

This year you will find the 14th annual World Communication Awards sits alongside the 2nd Total Telecom World conference and new for this year the Total Telecom Customer Experience Summit.

World Communication Awards: established 1999, attracts up to 600 senior executives from global telecom operators and service providers. The awards take place on the evening of the 13 November in the fabulous Nine Kings Suite on the ground floor. www.worldcommsawards.com

Total Telecom World returns for the 2nd year and will take place in the Westbourne Suite on the 13 November. This years theme is Disruption Eruption, bringing together a line-up of speakers who are challenging how telecoms business is done. www.totaltele.com/world

The Total Telecom Customer Experience Summit is new for this year and takes place on the 14 November and examines how operators can profit from well defined and applied customer experience strategies.

Whether you attend one event, or all three, you need to ensure you have the dates in your diary to meet compelling speakers and key peers to network with.

Book today for the largest savings!

Check out the venue floorplans

Who will be the Users' Choice?

In 2011 SingTel were the telecom operator receiving the highest ranking in the Customer Satisfaction Index that determines the Users' Choice award, but now we are out to discover who will be victorious in 2012.


The Users' Choice award at the annual World Communication Awards is unique, being determined based on the assessment of a survey of multi-national enterprise users of telecom services. The survey is carried out annually in conjunction with Ocean82 who developed the methodology, and considers the responses of more than 1,000 multinational businesses and enterprises in more than 30 countries.

Currently the survey covers 24 international telecom operators, ranging from AT&T to Verizon Business, but we keep the door open to additional players who can gather 30 or more responses from their customers. If you would like to know more about participating, contact enquiry@totaltele.com 

   

The winner of the 2012 Users' Choice award will be revealed at the 14th annual World Communication Awards on the 13 November in London.


The survey link for enterprises to complete the survey is www.surveymonkey.com/s/UsersChoice2012 or for more information on the World Communication Awards, visit the website


The World Communication Awards are organised by Total Telecom


Share this using the hashtag: #WCAUsersChoice

Professionalism, Quality, Contribution #WCA12

Professionalism, Quality, Contribution, these are the watchwords for a successful World Communications Award entry, according to Tony Lavender of Plum Consulting - Chair of the judges for the #WCA12

 

Watch Tony's interview with Brian Dolby at the 2011 WCA. The 2012 event takes place on the 13 November at the Lancaster Hotel, London.

Is your company the Best Place to Work? #BPTW

New for the 2012 World Communication Awards, the Best Place to Work category seeks to identify the telecom operator or service provider that offers the best working environment.

This is a free to enter category with the winners assessed based on submissions both from the company and the votes of their employees and is the first time such research has been carried out in the telecoms sector. For more information and to participate, visit the information page. 


In order for a company to be considered, at least 50 employees (or 1% of the workforce if less than 5,000 employees) must participate in the employee survey. This is totally anonymous, so why not start the ball rolling for your company by voting today, and share the Best Place to Work on Twitter using hashtag #BPTW

The Best Place to Work is one of 19 categories to be awarded at the 2012 World Communication Awards (WCA) The WCA have been established since 1999 and are truly the blue chip recognition of excellence and innovation amongst global telecom operators and service providers. The highlight of the annual programme is a awards dinner in November when up to 600 of the most senior executives in the industry gather to see who has been rewarded for their success.

The World Communication Awards are one of three such events organised by the team at Total Telecom, the others being the World Vendor Awards and Asia Communication Awards. The team have been recognised for the events they create by making the shortlist for Best Awards Team at this years Conference Awards.

Click here to find out more about the Best Place to Work
Click here to find out more about the 2012 World Communication Awards

The Best Place to Work category is sponsored by Harvey Nash

Thought leaders you can't afford to miss

Next weeks Total Telecom World will bring together senior executives from more than 90 organisations spanning the global telecoms industry, from AT&T to ZTE. Here's why you should grab a last minute opportunity to attend!

Royal Horseguards

The delegates will gather at the prestigous Royal Horseguards (One Whitehall Place) to debate the future of the  teleocms industry, explore how business models are changing, examine the impact of new competitiors and challenges, and learn more about emerging partnerships and solutions.

A fantastic line up of keynotes, presenters and panellists has come together, with the highlights including:

Nigel Stagg, CEO - BT Wholesale - the new CEO of BT Wholesale, in his first conference presentation since taking over from Sally Davis, talks about moving away from selling capacity.

Diarmid Massey, MD, Global Wholesale & Carrier - Cable&Wireless Worldwide told his peers
partner up or lose out when talking to Total Telecom - we'll see if his views have changed

Gerd Leonhard, CEO - The Futures Agency was called by the WSJ  ‘one of the leading Media Futurists in the World' - anyone who has seen him speak knows his presentation will be insightful and compelling





Ed Richards, CEO – Ofcom explains Ofcom's long-term vision for competition and investment

Marc Halbfinger has been CEO of PCCW Global since 2007 and has fantastic experience across the telecom industry. He joins other industry leaders from BT Wholesale, Orange Business Services and Virtela for a panel discussion examining how operators can profit from the cloud.

Erik Hallberg, President - TeliaSonera International Carrier provides the first keynote on Day 1. As the winners of the Best Customer Care award at the 2010 World Communication Awards, TSIC really understand what makes for happy customers.

Tom Homer became CEO of Telstra International earlier this year. He is responsible for delivering Telstra International EMEA’s growth strategy throughout the region.

It's now just a couple of working days away, so if you are still to book your place, the time for delay is over!

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

How to win a World Communication Award

It's simple, isn't it, write the best entry in the right category, the judges will be impressed and you'll go home with the trophy.

Well yes it is, but competition is fierce, so it's all about planning.

1. Recognise which categories to enter. Check out the entry criteria to ensure your entry really matches what the judges want

2. Maximise your chances - if you want to win, don't put all your eggs in once basket. this year there are 17 categories, so put in multiple entries - there's even a discount for additional entries!

3. Listen to the judges - they've all contibuted to a feedback page that you can view online plus you can hear their views and meet some of last years winners in the interviews from Total TeleVision

4. Don't leave it to the last minute. The entry deadline is 1 July, so start working on it now - not on the 30th June!

5. You know your products are good and your customers happy - so include their testamonials.

This years WCA will be presented on the 7th November at the London Hilton on Park Lane. To ensure you are there to pick up a trophy, FIND OUT HOW TO ENTER

Total Telecom World 2-day conference coincides with this years WCA

Visit www.totaltele.com/world for more information

Say Cheese

Flash bulbs welcomed the winners, cameras rolled, and Cornish Blue reigns supreme - apparently. A coincidence of timing meant attendees at the World Communication Awards tweeting hashtag #WCA were sharing a tag with the World Cheese Awards!

Despite this one minor glitch, and more generous use of the alternative #worldcommsawards, twitter has been alive with news of this years WCA, including the success of BT - you can catch up with the latest HERE

It was a great night all round, Mary Knightingale was a popular and effective host, whilst Big Ocean Bands really upped the tempo...

So all that remains is congratulations to all the winners, including the big winners on the night BT, Orange Business Services and Verizon. You can view the full list of winners on the website: www.worldcommsawards.com

Guess...

No prizes, but can you identify this image? All will be revealed at the World Communication Awards next week - now all sold out!

It should be a fantastic event, 550 senior execs including BT, Orange, Etisalat, Zaion, PCCW, China Telecom and many more...

Thankfully I was sitting down...

I am amazed, astounded, lost for words or at least pleasantly surprised.

Last year we achieved an outstanding 10,808 votes for our CEO of the Year poll for the World Communication Awards, so I was amazed when I looked at the voting to date and found that we are already at 18,359 individuals having voted. And since this year we are asking each individual to cast 3 votes, that's over 55,000 in total and voting doesn't close until the 8 October - so vote now!

It's also not all one way traffic, there's quite a few names in the frame, and the lead has changed several times, so make sure your prefered CEO doesn't miss out!

Also on user voted categories, we're getting a steady stream of votes for the Users Choice - if you are an end users, please do cast your vote...

This years World Communication Awards is shaping up to be a great event, so don't miss out, book your seat today!

Countdown WCA 2010

The entries have started to come in for the 2010 World Communication Awards - but there's still time for you to be involved...
Deadline for entries is this Friday, 2nd July 2010.


Submit your entries online in one of 15 categories that you can enter, including:

• Best Brand
• Best Content Service
• Best Customer Care
• Best Managed Service
• Best Mobile Operator
• Best New Service
• Best Operator in a Devloping Market
• Best Project Management
• The Alireza Mahmoodshahi Technology Foresight Award
• Best Mobile Device Strategy
• Best Wholesale Carrier
• Best Global Operator
• Best Regional Operator
• The Green Award
• Team of the Year
  

You can view the winners from previous years and get a feeling for what makes them winners by visiting the Roll of Honour of winners since 1999 or check out the Judges advice on writing a winning entry.

Remember if you don't enter, you can't win! Don't miss out Friday is the deadline...

Watch the introduction to the 2009 awards: