NEW DELHI INDIA: Eminent telecom industry leader Srinath N. was named the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year 2008 by Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia, Publishers of Voice&Data here late last evening. 

Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, Central Information Commission, presented the award to Srinath at the 9th Annual V&D 100 Awards function.

Srinath N., MD and CEO of Tata Communications, was chosen for this honour for transforming erstwhile VSNL from a domestic player to a multinational telecom company.

Under his leadership the Tata Communications global network became the world's largest submarine cable network that connects global citizens to over 200 countries. Tata Communications' global footprint now serves customers in 80 cities from 40 countries.

Past Winners of Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year award include Anil Ambani, Dayanidhi Maran, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Sunil Bharti Mittal.

The Jury Members of this years award were Dr DPS Seth, former member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India,  SC Khanna, secretary general, Association of Unified Service Providers of India,  NK Goyal, Chairman, Emeritus, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India, Amitabh Singhal, founder, ISPAI,  Rajiv Nayan Jha, Vice President, CMAI,  Vikram Tiwathia, Chief Information Officer, CII, Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia India and DP Vaidya, president, VSAT Association of India

IMImobile: the Emerging Company of the Year

 IMImobile was awarded the honour of being the Emerging Company of the Year for their significant contribution in the value added services (VAS)  space. IMImobile provides carrier grade messaging platforms and gateways, content management systems, and Voice platforms through managed services in 51 countries.

 The company has established itself as one of the leading providers of cutting edge technology in the mobile space recording phenomenal growth. IMImobile manages VAS, content platforms and aggregates content for over 200 operators and portals such as Yahoo!, Airtel, Jamba, Vodafone Essar and Maxis.

 Acme Tele Power MD Manoj Upadhyay: the Technovator of the Year

Manoj Kumar Upadhyay, Managing Director, Acme Tele Power was conferred the honour of Technovator of the Year for his remarkable contribution in providing innovative, energy efficient and environment friendly products for passive telecom infrastructure. Mr. Upadhyay is the inventor of seven patented product innovations and processes mainly in the energy efficiency area.

Acme Tele Power, known for offering cost-effective, energy-efficient integrated passive infrastructure solutions to telecom companies, launched the "Green Shelter", a complete package to fit environment and temperature parameters at telecom sites to do away with backup systems like diesel generators.

The Voice&Data awards were instituted in 2000 to honour leading players in the burgeoning telecom sector that posted revenues of over Rs. 225,967 crore in 2007-08. As per the Voice&Data survey 2008 the telecom services sector grew 21.3% to Rs. 130,561 crore on the back of 66.3% increase in telecom subscriber base while the Telecom Equipment sector grew 24% to Rs. 95,407 crore.

Touching upon the challenges for the Telecom industry in the current year, Prasanto K. Roy, Chief Editor of Voice&Data said, "The big challenges from the regulatory viewpoint will be the release of spectrum to telcos, and mobile number portability. The roll out of 3G and WiMax during the year will be key to the spread of the Internet given that India will once again miss achieving its broadband penetration targets this year."

Eight member jury meet of eminent professionals led Dr. DPS Seth, ex-CMD of BSNL and ex-member of TRAI. The other members of the jury meet included Mr. NK Goyal, Chairman, Emeritus TEMA; Mr. DP Vaidya, President, VSAT Association; Mr. SC Khanna, Secretary General, AUSPI; Mr. Vikram Tiwatia, CIO, CII; Mr. Rajiv Nayan Jha, Vice President, CMAI and Mr. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman MD, CyberMedia selected the companies for awards.

For the 2008 Indian Telecom Industry survey, the flagship publication for the telecom industry, Voice&Data covered over 650 equipment and services companies

 In the handsets category Bharti Teletech, LG Electronics and

Nokia were declared the winners in the Fixed Phones, Fixed Wireless Phones  and Mobile Phones category respectively.

For Telecom Software, Network Integration, Network Storage, Network Management Services the winners were TCS, Wipro Infotech, EMC and HCL Comnet respectively.

For overall telecom services and fixed national long distance categories, BSNL was the winner. For cellular and broadband services Bharti Airtel was the winner while the honour for the international long distance dialing went to Tata Communications.

In the infrastructure and equipment category the winners were Ericsson (for Wireless Infrastructure), Cisco Systems (for Enterprise Equipment) and Nokia (for Telecom Equipment).

Other category winners included:

Audio Video Conferencing – Polycom

Broadband Infrastructure— UTStarcom

Modem—Atrie Technology

Router, Switch, WLAN—Cisco

Structured Cabling—Tyco Electronics

Test & Measurement—Agilent Technologies

Telecom Cables—Sterlite Technologies

Telecom Turnkey—GTL Limited

Transmission—ECI Telecom

Voice Solutions—Avaya GlobalConnect

VSAT—Hughes Communications

Radio Trunking—Arvind Ltd

VAS- Onmobile

Wimax—Telsima Communications

V&D100 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.