The 10th Annual Voice&Data Award 2009 conferred Bharti Airtel CEO and Joint MD Manoj Kohli with the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year award on Friday, as 100 awards altogether were presented marking the accomplishments of various players of the Indian telecom industry.

The award, which was adjudged by Dr J S Sarma, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, was granted to Mr. Kohli for making Bharti Airtel a world class telecom company with its subscription crossing the 100 million mark last year to become the third largest single country mobile services operator in the world, said Mr. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia, Publisher of Voice&Data.

“The company beat BSNL for the first time and emerged as the numero uno operator in the V&D Top 10. Under his leadership Airtel focused on rural markets with 60% of its new customers additions coming from the rural area and is now actively expanding overseas,” added Mr. Gupta.

While accepting the award, Mr. Kohli said, “We are delighted to receive this prestigious award and thank Voice&Data for this honor. Committed to globally benchmarked quality, Bharti Airtel believes in constantly innovating so as to bring the best to our over 100 million customers. I am also personally honored to be named the Telecom Person of the Year. At Bharti Airtel, we believe in catalyzing national growth through an empowered leadership team and we are committed to take on bigger challenges in future.”

Simultaneously, One97 Communications was awarded the Emerging Company of The Year for its substantial contribution to the VAS space.

Commenting on the recognition, One97 Communications Managing Director Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “On being chosen as an emerging company by peers gives us immense pride in what we do. This award will spur all of us at One97 to continue to deliver our very best in the future.” 

Sanjay Swamy, the CEO of mChek was bestowed with the Technovator of The Year award for his contribution in developing and promoting the mChek solution that is expected to change the landscape of mobile payments in the coming years.

“I''m honored to receive the Technovator of the year award"This award is not just recognition of the pioneering work of the mChek team; it is also a recognition of the initiative of our key partners - Airtel, Visa and ICICI Bank - and everyone else who shares our vision for enabling mobile payments throughout India,” said Mr. Sanjay Swamy.

Finnish handset maker Nokia was granted the Green Company of The Year award for its initiative of recycling of mobile handsets. The company, within the first 45 days of starting its recycling awareness and take-back campaign, saw 3 tonnes of increase in waste collection including 10,000 handsets.

Besides, 33 awards were presented to 26 companies, with Bharti winning the Top Telecom Service Provider honor as also for leading in Cellular Services, National Long Distance Telephony and VSATs. Cisco was ranked as the Top Enterprise Equipment Company in addition to topping in Switch, WLAN and Router category.

State owned BSNL topped in the broadband services based on subscribers as well as Fixed Line services, while Reliance Communications topped the broadband services based on revenue and Tata Communications topped the International Long Distance Telephony category.

The Voice&Data Awards were instituted in 2000 to honor leading players in the telecom sector. The awards for this year was headed by a jury comprising of Dr. DPS Seth, ex-Member, TRAI and other members included RN Prabhakar, Member, TRAI; Kunal Bajaj, MD, BDA; Deepak Maheshwari, Director Corporate Affairs, Microsoft; Mahesh Uppal, Director, ComFirst; Naresh Ajwani, MD, SV Tel; P Balaji, VP, Marketing and Strategy, Ericsson India; and Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia India.