Airtel wins awards for rural projects

BANGALORE, INDIA: Telecom major Bharti Airtel today announced it has been awarded the 'Best Content Service' for the Airtel IFFCO farmer information dissemination platform and 'Best Project Management' for the Gujarat E-GRAM project at the world communication awards in London.

The Airtel-IFFCO project bagged the award for its innovation that provided the rural consumers granular information regarding their livelihood requirements, said a press release.

The service empowered the rural farmers by providing them with five free voice messages every day on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, dairy farming, animal husbandry, rural health initiatives and fertilizer availability etc, it added.

The Airtel E-gram is considered to be the largest e-governance rural connectivity initiative at the village level. Under this project Airtel had partnered with the Gujarat Government to set-up telecom infrastructure by providing a comprehensive VSAT based solution, to connect panchayats and common service centers (CSCs) across 13716 villages in the state, it added.

The connected eGRAMs and CSCs would deliver the rural populace high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data services in the areas of e-agriculture, e-governance, e-health and e-education.

The world communication award, instituted by Total Telecom in 1999, recognizes companies and individuals responsible for innovations, achievements and great new services in the global communication industry, the release said.