Prizes get real in carrier space

As the organiser of an awards event, there are many things you worry about in the run up to the big night.

Will the staging be right? Will the trophies be delivered on time? Will you take a tumble in your high heels and fall off the stage? (OK, that last one only applies to @RobDChambers.)

Everything was in place for the inaugural Carriers World Awards in London on Wednesday evening. The bubbly was flowing, the audience was ready. We were just lacking one thing…

The winners.

That’s right. Despite the awards attracting over 20,000 votes during the judging process – the first time we have run an entire awards event based on a public vote, by the way – many of the companies selected by their peers as the best in their category were not in the room when the trophies were presented!

"And the winner is…" Cue tumbleweeds.

Telin, Telefonica, Tata, Vodafone Carrier Services, Orange, and Epsilon were among those who had enough faith in themselves to be there to collect their prizes (see below for the full roll of honour), and there was a healthy number of shortlisted firms in the room; a hearty thank you and congratulations to all of them. But we also took home with us a fair number of unclaimed trophies.

"At least that proves they weren’t rigged," suggested one friendly attendee.

Well, quite. And being the ‘glass half full’ people we are at Total Telecom, we have chosen to focus on this aspect of proceedings.

We have been running awards events for the best part of 20 years; the 17th annual World Communication Awards will be held at Wembley Stadium in December. In that time a number of competitors have entered the market and presented awards of their own a little differently, shall we say, but Total Telecom has always stuck to its principles: we don’t tip off the winners in advance and all c ategories are assessed by a panel of independent judges or by an industry vote, nothing else.

If you’re on the shortlist, you’re in with a chance of winning!

Also on the plus side, the Carriers World conference, which we ran alongside the IPX Summit this year, was buzzing, with delegates and sponsors from all over the world, lively debate and lots of networking…some of it beer-fuelled, some not.

From a content point of view, highlights included discussion on the importance of standards in the wholesale space from such speakers as iBasis CEO Willem Offerhaus and Nick Ford, president of carrier services at IDT Telecom; insights into mobile data usage and IPX deployment from Jan Karmakar, director of Tele2’s international carrier and roaming business; a prediction from consultant John Strand that some of the world’s major telcos will separate out their networks businesses from retail operations in the coming years; and a presentation from Transatel CEO Jacques Bonifay detailing his company’s push into the embedded SIM market.

Keep checking Total Telecom over the coming weeks for more editorial coverage of the two events.

Carriers World Awards 2015
Roll of Honour

Best IPX Service Provider
SAP Mobile Services

Best Security/Fraud Solution
Subex

Best Messaging Solution
WhatsApp

Best Signalling Solution
Transaction Network Services (TNS)

Technology Innovation Award
BT Global Tele com Markets

Best Cloud Offering
Hutchison Global Communications

Best Data Centre Provider
Equinix

Outstanding Partnership Initiative
Telefonica and Telenor

Newcomer of the Year
Vodafone Carrier Services

Most Innovative Wholesaler
Telin