From correspondents in India, 02:00 PM IST

Srinath N., chief of Indian telecom major Tata Communications, has been named the 'Telecom Person of the Year' by the India-based Voice and Data magazine.

The magazine conferred the honour Thursday on Srinath who is the managing director and chief executive officer of Tata Communications Ltd, a leading provider of integrated telecommunications solutions.

He was conferred the honour for transforming the erstwhile state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) - in which the Tata's bought a majority stake in 2002 - into a multinational player in the international long distance space.

Tata Communications has the world's largest network of submarine cables and serves customers in over 40 countries.

Tata Communications also bagged the award for international long distance calling.

Srinath was unperturbed by the fact that many new companies including the state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) had lately acquired licences to provide National Long Distance (NLD) and International Long Distance (ILD) services.

'We don't get sleepless nights because of new entrants in the sphere. We have managed to keep giants like AT and amp;T at bay in the international arena and are the leaders,' he said.

Past winners of the Telecom Person of the Year award include Anil Ambani, Dayanidhi Maran, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Sunil Bharti Mittal.

India's Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah, after handing over the award to Srinath, spoke about the need for using information communication technologies in empowering the poor and the needy.

'The knowledge and the technology should be used for the purpose of freedom and democratization. There are about 300 million mobile phones in the country, if the information about public bodies is made available on the phones and the internet it would be a revolution,' he told a gathering of eminent professionals from the telecommunications arena.

IMI mobile - a value added services (VAS) start-up - was named the emerging company of the year at the same ceremony which was the 9th annual event by the magazine.

State-owned BSNL, which was in the news Thursday for talks about the company getting listed soon with its Initial Public Offering (IPO) bagged the award in the overall telecom services and fixed national long distance categories.

Nokia maintained top position in the mobile handsets category having 62.5 percent market share, while Bharti Teletech, the makers of Beetel, and LG Electronics won the top honours in the fixed line and fixed wireless line category.

Manoj Upadhyay, managing director of Acme Tele Power Ltd won the Technovator for offering cost-effective, energy-efficient and integrated passive infrastructure solutions to telecom companies.

Upadhyay is the inventor of seven patented product innovations and processes mainly in the energy efficiency area.

In the infrastructure and equipment category the winners were Ericsson (for Wireless Infrastructure), Cisco Systems (for Enterprise Equipment) and Nokia (for Telecom Equipment).

Other winners:

For Telecom Software - TCS

Network Integration - Wipro Infotech

Network Storage - EMC

Network Management Services - HCL Comnet

Audio Video Conferencing - Polycom

Broadband Infrastructure- UTStarcom

Modem - Atrie Technology

Router, Switch, WLAN - Cisco

Structured Cabling - Tyco Electronics

Test and amp; Measurement - Agilent Technologies

Telecom Cables - Sterlite Technologies

Telecom Turnkey - GTL Limited

Transmission - ECI Telecom

Voice Solutions - Avaya GlobalConnect

VSAT - Hughes Communications

Radio Trunking - Arvind Ltd

VAS - Onmobile

Wimax - Telsima Communications

(Staff Writer, © IANS)