The winning entries were: Airtel-IFFCO Farmer Information Dissemination Platform and the Gujarat E-GRAM Project
Mumbai, December 16, 2008: Bharti Airtel, India's leading
integrated telecom services provider has been awarded '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 held at London on 26th Nov'2008.
The Airtel-IFFCO Farmer Information Dissemination Platform project was awarded the best content service for its innovation and being able to provide rural consumers granular information regarding their livelihood requirements. The service empowers rural farmers by providing them with 5 free voice messages every day on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, diary farming, animal husbandry, rural health initiatives and fertiliser availability etc through 40,000+ IFFCO societies. This is a first of its kind initiative in India and is aimed to enhance the farmers' livelihood and their quality of life. The Platform has been created and is maintained by Airtel for IKSL (IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd), the JV Company between Airtel and IFFCO. Other nominees in this category were Omnifone (MusicStation), Orange/France Telecom (Orange Sports TV), Peperoni Software (Mobile Social Networking/Mobile Site Building), Tata Communications (Live Darshan - Blessings), and Turkcell (Hospital Reservation via SMS)
The Airtel E-gram Connectivity Infrastructure project is 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. The connected eGRAMs and CSCs will deliver to 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. Other nominees in this category were Alcatel Lucent, Comverse, Easynet, Orange Business Services, and TEO LT among others.
The World Communication Awards, instituted by Total Telecom in 1999, recognizes companies and individuals responsible for innovations, achievements and great new services in the global communication industry. The Awards seek participation from all communications providers - traditional carriers, service providers, multimedia content providers or any organisation providing a communication service. The winners for all categories, with the exception of the Person of the Decade in Communications, are awarded based on the decision of an independent panel of judges.
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