Voice&Data 18th Telecom Leadership Forum Celebrates Industry Excellence And Leadership

Telecom Leadership Forum is an annual meeting of the Indian telecom leaders and other industry stakeholders. It is a platform to meet, discuss, and explore new and emerging business models, technology options, revenue streams and changing customer expectations. The objective is to help telecom leaders grow their business with better and newer services.

While the main conference Digital – Disruption & Consolidation saw the who is who in the telecom industry deliberating on an array of trends and issues reshaping Indian telecom industry, the forum also celebrated telecom leadership and industry excellence.

VOICE&DATA LEADERSHIP AWARDS

TELECOM COMPANY OF THE YEAR: RELIANCE JIO

The telecom company of the year 2018 goes to Reliance Jio that in less than 2 years acquired 200= million customers

CTO OF THE YEAR: JAGBIR SINGH, Former Tech Head, Reliance Jio

This award recognized Jagbir Singh’s key role in building a super network for Jio that formed the backbone to Jio’s success in a short span of time.

TELECOM CTO OF THE YEAR: AKHIL GUPTA, Vice Chairman, Bharti Airtel 

The Voice&Data Awards 2018 jury this time has conferred this coveted award to Akhil Gupta, Vice Chairman, Bharti Airtel for his leadership role played in the telecom form its very nascent stage. His pragmatism and statesmanship and his overall contribution to policy making and the subsequent impact it had in unshackling the telecom sector. His pivotal role in Bharti’s phenomenal growth both organically and by the way of various acquisitions right from the inception had its big impact on the country, its economy and the people.

TELECOM PERSON OF THE YEAR: ARUNA SUNDARARAJAN, SECY, DOT

A well-deserved award for Aruna’s contribution to this sector over the last couple of years that has propelled the telecom in this part of the world to the next orbit via appropriate policy interventions.

INDUSTRY AWARDS

ENTERPRISE BUSINESS SERVICES: 

VODAFONE-IDEA: For creating a Service Management Portal for Mobility & IoT that resulted in tremendous improvement in operational efficiency

AT&T:For creating an edge-to-edge intelligence leveraging state-of-the-art tech to make customer networks highly flexible and future-ready 

RELIANCE JIO: For building the path-breaking 'Jio Engage' that enabled businesses to reach out to next billion Internet users in real time

SMART CITY: 

STERLITE TECHNOLOGIES:For building a centralized Command & Control Centre that enabled the Smart City applications to empower the citizens of Kakinada 

NETWORK INFRA INNOVATION: 

VODAFONE IDEA: For creating a Smart Tracking and Infra System that ushered in the overall uptick in customer experience and satisfaction

STERLITE TECHNOLOGIES : For the innovation 'Work Safe Aerial Fibre Optic cable' that has the required tensile strength, an optimum predictable point of breakage, and is safe

STERLITE TECHNOLOGIES : For industry's first unified solution that converges network design, deep fiberisation & virtualisation for ubiquitous connectivity to every home

CUSTOMER SERVICE: 

RELIANCE JIO: For creating a single interface 'MyJio' that ushered in a one-stop shop for all of Jio's product and service customers

VODAFONE IDEA :For its 'Bill Guarantee' platform hat simulates customer’s bill on all available plans and bills on the basis of lowest bill, and credits the balance back.

ACT:

For its innovative ACT ChatBot leveraging AI, machine learning and Alexa and bringing in faster customer problems and queries resolution 

SECURITY

RELIANCE JIO:For creating new benchmarks in connectivity and redefining consumption patterns leading to an exponential increase in per capita data consumption

MARKETING:

RELIANCE JIO: For its innovative mobile & TV combo app 'Jio Cricket Play Along' that engaged over 50% of it's customers on their mobile phones

VODAFONE IDEA : For its innovative ‘Filmy Recharge’ that transformed mobile movie viewing experience on smartphones and got 5 Mn viewers in 3 months

VAS & APPS

VODAFONE: For 'Sakhi', a free women's security app downloaded by millions for its features including emergency alerts and emergency balance

RELIANCE JIO: For its content-rich digital apps 'JioSaavn' with over 45million songs, and 'JioCinema' which have over 550 live TV channels

BUSINESS PROCESS INNOVATION:

Vodafone idea: For its fixed line Order Management portal that can be accessed from locations across India and has reduced delivery time by 50 percent

IOT:

Vodafone : For its IoT solution that has helped India's largest commercial vehicles manufacturer and its customers with telematics solutions for fleet management

Dr Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar, Aeries Communication: For bringing innovative IoT solutions and creating relevant business & commercial models specific to the Indian requirements

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Railtel: For its IIT-JEE coaching initiative for under-privileged youth that has got 45 aspirants selected for IIT

Indus Towers: For delivering quality education by use of innovative digitally equipped vans and classrooms benefiting over 3200 schools pan India

Vodafone Idea: For its RUDI Sandesh Vyavhara mobile supply chain platform that helps over 3900 semi-literate or illiterate rural saleswomen to enhance their income by 20-30 percent

CLOUD

SIFY TECHNOLOGIES: For managing 350+ enterprise customers on its Cloudinfinit, Azure & AWS platforms with risk-free migration and service assurance