CMAI-INFOCOM announces telecom awards

NEW DELHI, INDIA: CMAI, Communications & Manufacturing Association of India, led by NK Goyal, partnering with INFOCOM, a Businessworld initiative, and Star News as TV partners, has announced the INFOCOM CMAI National Telecom Awards 2009 for various categories.

Gurudas Kamat, Hon'ble Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology, Government of India, presented the awards recently.

The awardees for various categories are:

MTS: Most Successful New Telecom Operator
MTS, the mobile telephony brand of Sistema-Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), is currently present in six telecom circles and has a subscriber base of more than 1.35 million, in less than five months of its launch

T Narasimhan and Raymond Armes, deputy CEOs, Shyam Sistema TeleServices Ltd. received the award.

SSTL launched its operations on September 30, 2008 and introduced the MTS brand of services in India from Chennai in March 2009. The company has already invested about $1.2 billion in the country and is going strong on its plans for a pan India roll out. 

Aircel: Excellence in Marketing of New Telecom Service
Aircel, a part of Maxis Communications Berhad, Malaysia, is India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 22 million, offers Pocket Internet and was the first to break its advertising campaign on Facebook.

Aircel launched its GSM Mobile Services in eight circles this year in a span of four months. A Pan India operator, Aircel is targeting to touch 30million subscribers by the end of 2009.

Gurdeep Singh COO, Aircel Limited, who received the award, said: "Aircel, who ropped in M.S.Dhoni, Captain of the Indian Cricket team, builds its brand around the values Simple, Creative and Trustworthy. The Brand positions itself around the tagline, ‘Explore your world of possibilities’, focusing on VAS and going beyond voice."

UTStarcom: Best Broadband System Intergrator Company
UTStarcom successfully integrating its infrastructure with telecom service providers to enable multi-play broadband (a.k.a. Triple-Play broadband) in India. These broadband services enable users to access voice, data and video on the same broadband connection at fast speeds that were previously unattainable.

Vijay Yadav, managing director of UTStarcom’s South Asia operations, who received the award, said: “With a vision to make India multi-play broadband enabled, UTStarcom is committed to providing an end-to end infrastructure for enabling broadband services.”