As the transformation of the network into a software environment progresses rapidly, so do the opportunities to use artificial intelligence to augment it. The most significant AI advance in a telecoms context will win this award. This could include network management, customer experience management or general applications.

Finalists:

• Mycom OSI - EAA portfolio and Digital Transformation Solutions
• Red Hat - Turkcell cloud-native AI innovation with Red Hat OpenShift
• Subex - HyperSense
• Turkcell - My Gem Inside: AI-Based Emotion Recognition for Autistic Children
• Whale Cloud - China Mobile ‘no-code’ intelligent data mining platform

The management, optimisation and security of networks is becoming ever more automated as their complexity increases. This award will be won by the product, project or outcome that demonstrates the best use of automation in a telecoms context. We will also consider related automation initiatives such as autonomous vehicles.

Finalists:

• Ericsson - Empowering Airtel's automation journey
• Huawei - Huawei Core Network Autonomous Driving
• P.I. Works - SmartPlan
• Qunifi - Call2Teams
• Turkcell - HyperAutomation

Now that 5G is a commercial reality, it’s down to the operators to bring it to the market in the most appealing ways possible. This award will go to the operator that has demonstrated the most innovative approach to using 5G in order to bring products and services to market. Evidence of this could be commercial or technological, but the winning entry will need to show it has used 5G to make a significant difference to its business and its customers.

Finalists:

• Altiostar - Rakuten Mobile 5G Open RAN Cloud-Native Network
• Optus - Optus 5G Technology & Service Innovation
• STC Bahrain - STC Bahrain 5G virtual private network

It’s still early days in the 5G cycle and there is plenty of room and time for vendors to improve their 5G offerings. This award will go to the telecoms vendor that has developed the best new technology or service that raises the bar for 5G. The winning entry could involve entirely new features or just more efficient use of existing ones, but will need to demonstrate a significant contribution to the advancement of 5G on the whole.

Finalists:

• Amdocs - Amdocs end-to-end holistic 5G Monetization Strategy
• Ericsson - Ericsson's 5G Leadership & Innovation in Australia
• Netcracker - Netcracker Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller
• Nokia - Tier 1 US 5G SA CHF Project Utilizing Design Led Thinking
• DZS - DZS Chronos C1216RO open fronthaul gateway

Digital transformation is a broad concept encompassing all the ways in which businesses can move their products, processes, communication and underlying culture into the digital age. In the context of telecoms this has become especially critical in the smartphone era as consumer expectations have rapidly shifted in the digital direction. This award will be won by the project that has done most to bring about digital transformation in an organisation and can best demonstrate the resulting benefits.

Finalists:

• Verizon + Accenture - A Digital-First Approach to Building 5G Right
• Ooredoo Kuwait - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)-as-a-Service
• Huawei - AI-powered Digital Transformation Project
• Tata Communications - TCx Portal
• Turkcell - Mobile Voice Network Transformation (VoiceX program)

The telecoms industry is ultimately about operators (or carriers as they’re sometimes called) so it seems only right that they be recognised in these awards. The winner will be the operator that can best demonstrate significant achievement over the past couple of years by whichever KPIs you want it to be judged. These could include business growth, technological achievement or product innovation.

Finalists:

• EE's Network Roll Out
• China Mobile International
• Ooredoo Group
• SK Telecom's 5GX Hyper-connected Networks and Services

Telecoms consumers are becoming increasingly demanding when it comes to the value, flexibility and relevance of their communications services. For telecoms companies BSS is the frontline technology for interacting with their customers and therefore is more business-critical than ever. Meanwhile it’s also vital that OSS provides the agility to allow operators to meet demand. This award will go the BSS and/or OSS initiative that demonstrates the greatest innovation and commercial benefit to its users.

Finalists:

• Beyond by BearingPoint - BNET’s cloud native BSS/OSS upgrade
• Huawei - 5G BSS Reconstruction Project for China Mobile Chongqing
• Lifecycle - All In One BSS
• Netcracker - Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS
• Telecom Argentina - #FAN

A surprising proportion of the global population still have limited access to communication technologies, which have been consistently shown to improve independence, productivity and standard of living once acquired. Judges will be looking for evidence of uptake within the groups addressed and the benefits provided as well as innovation in the use of the network, equipment, products, solutions or service provision.

Finalists:

• Batelco - Covering offshore islands with mobile services
• Federated Wireless – Bridging the Digital Divide with CBRS Shared Spectrum
• Starlogik - StarZRO
• Kymeta - Kymeta u8 electronically steered satellite antenna platform and Kymeta Connect
• Ufinet – Rio de Janeiro fibre network

As the Internet of Things finally enters its commercial phase, this award will recognise any initiative that develops IoT in a consumer setting. Successful entries are likely to be those that demonstrate significant advancements in the technology of IoT or those that realised significant commercial benefits. Typical consumer IoT implementations include: smart devices, smart home and connected cars.

Finalists:

• Huawei - China Mobile Research Institute & Huawei C-V2X Network Test Solution
• Radisys - Radisys Reach Smart Home
• Turkcell - Smart Micromobility with LTE-M

As the concept of digital transformation matures, do does the understanding of what it really means in a telecoms context. This award will be won by the concept, product or project that demonstrates the greatest innovation around that concept Unlike the digital transformation project category pre-commercial projects can apply for this award, but you will need to demonstrate how it will eventually be commercialised.

Finalists:

• VMware - Multi cloud service grid
• Nexign - Nexign Microservices Framework
• Nokia - Nokia Digital Assistant
• STL - STL Garv    

This award recognises excellence in the field of residential, wholesale or enterprise fixed broadband – such as FTTH or G.fast. A successful entry will demonstrate how network innovations are delivering new levels of service quality for customers; generating new revenue streams or business models; or disrupting competitive markets. Ideal entrants would be from ISPs, cable operators, fibre providers or network solutions vendors.

Finalists:

• Ciena - Expansion of Universal Aggregation solution
• Incognito - Monetization and Analytics Platform
• Positron - G.hn Gigabit Access Multiplexer
• RtBrick - RtBrick's Virtualized Broadband Routing Software

NFV and SDN have rapidly moved from concept to trial to real-world implementation. Virtualization will be a cornerstone of the next generation of telecoms technology and the time to invest in it is now. This award will be won by the virtualization initiative or project that is shown to have done the most to move things forward in the area of virtualized network functions and advance the general cause of virtualization in the context of telecoms.

Finalists:

• Altiostar - Rakuten Mobile for 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes
• VMware - Telco Cloud Platform
• Huawei - Huawei hitless NFVI batch upgrade solution
• Enea - Telenor’s virtualization solution

As the Internet of Things finally enters its commercial phase, this award will recognise any initiative that develops IoT in an industrial setting. Successful entries are likely to be those that demonstrate significant advancements in the technology of IoT or those that realised significant commercial benefits. 

Finalists:

• China Mobile International - RINGA
• Ericsson - Ericsson IoT Accelerator platform enabling Axon’s connected cameras
• Rohde & Schwarz - 5G private networks performance tuning for industrial use cases

Telcos aren’t just using the cloud to manage their networks, they’re increasingly looking to provide cloud services to their enterprise and consumer customers. The winner of this award will be the cloud service that can demonstrate its practical and/or commercial benefit to the telecoms industry and its customers, whether that’s in the backend or as a marketable product.

Finalists:

• Colt Technology Services - Colt Cloud Services
• Robin - The Robin Cloud Native Platform
• Infovista - Delivering Open, Cloud-Based Network Planning Services to Rakuten Mobile
• CSG - Ascendon

5G has made the cloud more important than ever for the telecoms industry, so technologies that both improve the performance of the cloud and tailor it specifically for telcos are vital. This award will go to the technology that has done the most to achieve this in the past 12 months and can demonstrate how it has made a difference to the industry.

Finalists:

• Cohere Technologies - Industry's First 2x Spectrum Multiplier xApp for Open RAN
• Symbio - Symbio’s CPaaS voice network and product launch into Singapore
• Red Hat - Red Hat OpenShift

As the telecoms industry becomes ever more complex, CSPs are increasingly turning to managed services to help them stay on top of it. This award will be won by the entry that can demonstrate innovation in managed service provision resulting in the most significant benefit to the customer. This could be any kind of managed service and any kind of telecoms customer.

Finalists:

• Plume - Plume’s SaaS Experience Platform
• Colt Technology Services - SD WAN 2.0
• Ericsson - Indosat Ooredoo & Ericsson AI/ML and Automation driven managed services transformation
• Sterlite - Auto Alert Management & Escalation

Telecommunications is revolutionising the way the world handles money from payments, to credit, to banking and every year there are significant breakthroughs in this area. The Mobile Money Mastery award will be presented to the company, product or initiative that demonstrates the greatest innovation in the provision of financial services via telecommunications networks and/or mobile devices.

Finalists:

• 6D Technologies - E-Teeru Mobile money platform
• Comviva - MOVii
• Subex - Mobile Money with EcoCash
• Turkcell - Financell Loan

This new category is specifically designed to recognise a telecoms project that came to its conclusion in 2018 or 2019. No concepts, product launches or works-in-progress will be accepted, only completed project. The winner will be the one that can demonstrate the best business outcome at its conclusion, be that commercial, technological or whatever other KPI works for you.

Finalists:

• Huawei - Huawei Rock-Solid Soution
• STE with Calix Professional Services - GPON and Active Ethernet-ready network built on AXOS
• Solutions by STC - Dammam7 Supercomputer Project
• STC - Proactive Roaming Protection

Security frailties have repeatedly made headlines over the past 12 months, as such this category will award excellence cyber threats mitigation for to telecoms operators. Entries will demonstrate excellence in fields such as SS7 security, protection against fraudulent activity, DDoS mitigation, data protection, cloud security and everything in between. Judges will be looking to understand the threats prevented, the impact to business and the technologies utilised to defend networks.

Finalists:

• AB Handshake - Call validation
• Nokia - Nokia for NetGuard XDR Security Operations in 5G
• Ribbon - Ribbon Call Trust
• AdaptiveMobile Security, an Enea Company - Unified 5G Network Security Solution

This award focuses on any commercial or technological initiatives that have resulted in a significant improvement in communications service delivery. This category is unconstrained by technology type and is designed to reward any innovation in the telecoms space. Judges are looking for projects yielding substantial business gain to the CSP community.

Finalists:

• Cujo AI - CUJO AI Explorer - Advanced Device Identification
• Lightyear – Lightyear software platform
• Liquid Intelligent Technologies - High-capacity broadband connection between the capitals of DRC and Congo
• Parallel Wireless - Parallel Wireless Urban Macro Open RAN Solution
• Turkcell - Next Generation Notification Engine (NGNE)