Sunil Mittal is V&D Global Telecom Leader for 2010

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Indian telecom industry celebrated its achievements here late last evening by recognizing key industry players and companies that had excelled during 2009-10 by clocking revenues of US $ 63 billion (Rs. 296,343 crore) and achieving tele-density of over 50 per cent in 2009-10.

The telecom industry revenues comprises telecom equipment revenue of Rs. 136,833 crore and telecom services revenue of Rs.159,510 crore.

While presenting the awards, DoT Secretary PJ Thomas lauded the telecom industry. Among those honoured, Tata Teleservices MD Anil Sardana was the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year and Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal was the Global Telecom Leader for 2010. In Mittal's absence his award was received by Sanjay Kapoor, CEO of Bharti Airtel.

In his address, Telecom Secretary PJ Thomas, the man responsible for setting the telecom policy, complimented the telecom industry for crossing the 650 million subscriber milestone. The industry now needs to offer connectivity to the remaining 500 million Indians, he said. With the conclusion of 3G auctions, the industry can now embark on providing data services thus powering the mobile devices.

Key industry players like Wipro, Bharti Airtel, Cisco and BSNL were honoured for being the leaders in more than one category.

Alluding to the challenges facing the industry, Pradeep Gupta, chairman and managing director, CyberMedia India said, “While the industry is gearing up to connect every single Indian, its profitability is under great strain. The industry also looks forward to clearer policy directions on security issues.”

Giving an overview of the Indian telecom industry, Prasanto K Roy, chief editor of CyberMedia Publications said, “The operators will need much more than magic to make money post-3G spectrum licensing. An early allocation of 3G spectrum, quick ramp up of data services and lower energy costs as a result of reliable utility supply can alone help the industry stay afloat.”

Anil Sardana, the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year, is better known as the hero of the Indian mobile users. It was Sardana who pioneered the “per second billing options” which created new opportunities for the mobile customers. In addition, he helped his company roll out GSM services in 14 of India's 22 telecom circles in just six months.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, who won the Global Telecom Leader award, was honoured for building an incredibly successful business from scratch and setting new benchmarks for emerging markets worldwide following the acquisition of Zain Telecom. With the recent acquisition of Zain Telecom Bharti Airtel has access to Zain’s African mobile operations in 15 countries, with a total customer base of over 42 million.

To honour companies that launch with great ideas Voice & Data presented the Voice & Data Emerging Company of the Year Award to Matrix Cellular for growing from a niche company to a name synonymous with international travel brand equity.

The Best Telecom Innovator award from Voice&Data went to Vamshi Krishna Reddy, co-founder of Apalya Technologies for bringing entertainment-on-the-go in the form of mobile TV service. Constant improvements by Mr Reddy enabled mobile broadband users to exploit TV and video-on-demand content-on-the-go and earned them hundreds of thousands of viewers during IPL.

Voice&Data’s Green Company of the Year award went to Huawei and Ericsson — the two equipment vendors who sold equal number of green base stations in India to help service providers to spend less on energy bills.

“The V&D Awards are as much about identifying the winners of tomorrow as they are about achievers of today. PwC's research and analysis enabled the award jury to take a balanced view of both the present as well as the future,” said Sivarama Krishnan, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that played the Knowledge Partner role in the jury awards process.

The jury members included A Sethuraman of Huawei; Naresh Ajwani, Wttil Quippo; Kunal Bajaj, Analysys Mason; Rajat K Mukarji, Idea Cellular; Satyen Gupta, British Telecom and Pradeep Gupta, chairman, CyberMedia India.