By IANS,
New Delhi : Tata Communications managing director and chief executive Srinath N. has been named the telecom person of the year by Voice and Data magazine.
He was conferred the honour for transforming the erstwhile Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) – in which the Tata group bought a majority stake in 2002 – into a multinational player in the international long distance space.
Tata Communications also bagged the award for international long distance calling.
At the award ceremony, Srinath said he was unperturbed by the fact that many new companies had lately acquired national long distance (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) licences including the state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL).
“We don’t get sleepless nights because of new entrants in the sphere. We have managed to keep giants like AT&T at bay in the international arena and are the leaders,” he said.
Past winners of the Telecom Person of the Year award include Anil Ambani, Dayanidhi Maran, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Sunil Bharti Mittal.
India’s Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah, after handing over the award to Srinath, spoke about the need for using information communication technologies in empowering the poor and the needy.
“Knowledge and technology should be used for freedom and democratisation,” he told a gathering of professionals from the telecommunications sector.
“There are about 300 million mobile phones in the country; if the information about public bodies is made available on phones and the Internet, it would be a revolution.”
Cybdermedia chairman Pradeep Gupta said: “Telecom is bridging the digital divide. Operators have started actually focusing on rural and suburban areas in a big way. More than half the new mobile subscriber additions are from places with less than 20,000 population.”
IMI mobile – a value-added services start-up – was named the emerging company of the year.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), which is considering a 10 percent disinvestment, bagged the award in the overall telecom services and fixed national long distance categories.
Nokia maintained its top position in the telecom equipment segment, boasting a 62.5 percent market share, while Bharti Teletech – the makers of Beetel – and LG Electronics won the top honours in the fixed line and fixed wireless line category.
Manoj Upadhyay, managing director of Acme Tele Power won the ”technovator” or technology innovator award for offering cost-effective, energy-efficient and integrated passive infrastructure solutions to telecom companies.
Upadhyay is the inventor of seven patented product innovations and processes mainly in the energy efficiency area.
In the infrastructure and equipment category, the winners were Ericsson (for wireless infrastructure) and Cisco Systems (for enterprise equipment).
Other winners included TCS (for telecom software), Wipro Infotech (for network integration), EMC (network storage), HCL Comnet (network management services), Polycom Broadband Infrastructure (audio video conferencing), and Sterlite Technologies (telecom cables).