Frost & Sullivan presents 21 awards to Asia-Pacific telecom operators and vendors to recognize their best-in-class performance and innovations
A total of 21 awards were presented to 16 telecom operators and equipment suppliers at the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards in Singapore on June 16
The big winners this year were Bharti Airtel and Huawei Technologies, each honored with three awards. Bharti Airtel's hat trick included Wireless Service Provider of the Year, Competitive Service Provider of the Year as well as CEO of the Year in the Service Provider category, which went to its CEO, Sunil Bharti Mittal.
For Huawei it was the second year it took home three awards. The China vendor received the Vendor of the Year, Optical Vendor of the Year and Broadband Equipment Vendor of the Year Awards.
The other multi-award recipient was SK Telecom, which won Wireless Data Service Provider of the Year and Most Innovative Application/Product of the Year for its i-Kids.
Following deadlock debates in a couple of closely contested categories, two new categories were added by the judging panel. There were Wireless Data Service Provider of the Year and the award for Outstanding Contribution to Industry Development, which went to South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication.
In the winner's circle for the third year running was SingTel, winning the Service Provider of the Year Award for its consistent and sustainable revenue growth. See table for full list of winners. There were also six awards in the enterprise vendor category, which aren't included here.
'The Asia Pacific ICT industry has made terrific progress in 2005, and growth has returned as a key agenda for companies,' said Manoj Menon, partner at Frost & Sullivan. 'We have seen some outstanding performances by both local as well as multinational companies in driving business growth in the region. Increasingly, companies in Asia Pacific are setting global best practices in innovation, service and business strategies for the global ICT industry.
'We are delighted to be able to share and showcase these best practices with the industry. Benchmarked against the highest standards, the recipients of these awards indeed represent the best-in-class, and are suitably hailed the Gems of Asia,' he added.
Held for the third consecutive year, the Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards are presented annually to recognize companies and individuals that have demonstrated best practices in their industry - rising above the competition and pushing the boundaries of excellence.
Methodology
A team of 30 Frost & Sullivan analysts and consultants based across the region first evaluated the major players and worked out a shortlist of 70 organizations operating across 14 countries in the region as the top contenders. The findings were then presented to a panel of 16 independent judges to determine the winner in each category. The panel represents the who's who in ICT in Asia, bringing together some of region's most influential industry experts.
Although the selection criteria differed slightly from category to category, all nominees were benchmarked against a number of market performance indicators for FY2005, including revenue growth, market share and market share growth, leadership in new product development and innovation, customer acquisitions, as well as business and market strategy. Service providers were also judged on their subscriber base, subscriber growth, ARPU and ARPU growth.