GSM Association Announces Prize Winners

The eve of the 2002 3GSM World Congress saw the seventh GSM Association awards presented by international journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow at a gala event at the Palm Beach Casino in Cannes.

Each year the prestigious wireless industry awards attract a huge number of entries from companies worldwide. This year's awards, sponsored by PWC Consulting - a business of PriceWaterhouseCoopers - were no exception, with the highest number of submissions to date.

"Once again, our industry has surpassed itself," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. "The sheer diversity, innovation and technological excellence demonstrated by all the entries made the choice of winners a supremely difficult task."

Awards were made for the first time this year for technology innovation in both handset and infrastructure product development; applications and services for consumer and corporate markets; best application developer; best marketing campaign and the wireless accessibility award.

The winners of the GSM Association Awards 2002 were announced as follows:

Best Infrastructure or Network Solutions product - Wireless Online (USA)
Best Wireless Handset/Terminal or Handheld Device - NTT DoCoMo (Japan)

Category Two - Applications and Services:
Best Corporate Wireless Application or Service: Far EasTone Telecommunications Co., (Taiwan)
Best Consumer Wireless Application or Service - Codeonline (Finland)
Best Wireless Application Developer - Network 365 (Ireland)

Category Three - Marketing and Promotion:
Best Television Commercial - Sonera Corporation, Mobile Operations (Finland)
Best Marketing Campaign - Orange (France)

Category Four  - GSM in the Community:
Wireless Accessibility Award - MTN Networks (Sri Lanka)
Best use of Wireless for Emergency Situations - Joint Winners: Polkomtel SA. Poland, and Ericsson (Sweden)

Category Five - GSM Association Gold Roll of Honour Winners:
George Schmitt, Currently Chairman and acting CEO of e.spire Communications Inc
Mauro Sentinelli, Managing Director of Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM)
Hans Snook, Formerly CEO and Group Managing Director of Orange

GSM Association's Special Recognition Award:
Telecom Italia Mobile for M-Services (Italy)

GSM Association Chairman's Award:
NTT DoCoMo (Japan)

Summarising this year's awards, Rob Conway said: "Each year we are amazed by the industry which we represent. Each year I think we will exhaust the possibilities and the superlatives, yet once again the capabilities of the GSM family of wireless communications has driven us to new levels of achievement. I thank everyone for their hard work and contributions, and am proud to represent such a spectacular industry.""

Posted to the site on 21st February 2002