by Marc Anné, Chair of Judges at the World Communication Awards
Last Tuesday evening, all the shortlisted nominees as well as the Judges enjoyed the 26th anniversary of the World Communication Awards (WCA). This year, the Oscar grade gala event took place in The Marriott, Grosvenor Square, London.
On behalf of the Judging Panel, I hereby congratulate all the winners and finalists of this year, as well as a big thank you to all the WCA award entrants for their participation and involvement. The quality and level of this year’s submissions was once again superb. The Judges praised the DNA of the WCA, namely the diversity and quality of the entries and highlighted the integrity and impartiality of our judging process.
We are also pleased to see an increasing presence of various African, Latin America and USA players in the WCA.
This year, we broke records with 219 entries across 23 award categories, showcasing incredible innovation and excellence.
You can find the full list of Award winners here.
On behalf of the 100+ WCA Judges, I want to warmly thank all the award entrants for their participation and involvement.
So, what were some of the common trends, solutions, recurring themes and strategies that characterized the WCA submissions this year?
Key trends and topics from this year’s World Communication Awards
- As expected, the newly introduced AI Award became a popular category. 2023 saw the rise of generative AI, and 2024 proved to be the year of its integration into telecommunications. I will soon publish a dedicated LinkedIn post on AI awards trends and strategies.Enhancing customer and user experience, by leveraging foundational AI models and Large Language Models providing selfcare and trouble ticketing, was a hit.Also, the automation of various telco processes, across their operations cycle, are getting streamlined by deploying various AI solutions aiming to increase productivity. Use cases covered included the Lead to Quote cycle, preventive maintenance inspections, and invoice analytics.The AI proactive recognition of anomalous data pattern behaviors and the presentation of possible root-causes and actionable insights is leading the way towards autonomous networks.AI enhanced knowledge management systems, as well as various AI assisted energy efficiency solutions, were presented in various submissions.As well as AI innovation helps to improve fraud mitigation and eliminates artificial inflation of traffic.
- Finally, the world’s first autonomous telecom store was presented in the category of the Future Award. It integrates advanced AI, Machine Learning, sensor fusion, robotics and facial recognition technologies. Obviously 5G remains a recurring theme with lots of progressive innovations and new solutions presented in various award categories.
- 5G slicing was regularly the entries’ theme in various award categories, such as for example: differentiated connectivity with guaranteed SLA’s via committed slicing performance levels for enterprise customers.Pilots were also presented in 5G core disaster recovery networking solutions offered via a public cloud platform. The world’s largest-scale 5G Redcap low-bandwidth pilot for IOT devices did form part of the entries.Various global e-SIM connectivity solutions were also touched upon.The ‘Low Altitude Economy’ was mentioned as a Best Network Transformation initiative, aiming to optimize low altitude 5G network communications for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).Another notable entry covered a smart 5G application within a dedicated network infrastructure that can withstand high temperature and vibrations in wind farms.
- Network operations based on open-source solutions and generic hardware were praised as regaining control of the operator’s networks by avoiding vendor lock ins.
- The Edge to Cloud connectivity theme gave rise to many entries such as hybrid multi-cloud solutions which aim to seamlessly move data services and application between on-premises private cloud. Even an Edge SIM was presented as a multi-cloud connection Cloud Router solution that bypasses the public internet and passes IOT traffic to a private layer 3 network.
- The Cybersecurity Award covered various zero-trust solutions. Mitigation of phishing, malware and scams was presented with real time authentication services of seamless digital identities via Open API. Also noteworthy was the premiere of a commercial quantum-secured network trial for quantum secured communication services.
- In the Beyond Connectivity Award as well as the Access Innovation Award the respective “golden” 10 or 15 seconds was touched upon: avoiding that fans switch to another provider after more than 10 seconds of poor network conditions or allowing callers to watch a video set of 15 seconds by callee while waiting the call to connect.
- In the Digital Transformation Award solutions were cited which massively improve Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and complaint handling via a central data repository, creating a single source of truth for network operations. Customers and omni-channel experiences were another area of focus as well as a human-centered digital transformation approach with for example empowered marketeers who make UX/UI changes without technical assistance.
- One of themes in the Platform Award is the monetization of 5G and deployment of new VAS services spanning across silos of systems (5G, Edge, computing, IT/BOSS, cloud, etc.). Digital ecosystems platforms aim to transform transactional approaches into relational ones.
- The new Connected Communities Award covered different types of network solutions for different types of geographies and users: the world largest overwater microwave link for King Island; the first city owned high speed fiber network in Arkansas funded without state subsidies.
- The more than justified Crises Response Award winner is the Ukrainian operator Kyivstar defeating adversity amid network attacks with a long-term investment strategy to rebuild communications in a country torn by war. Other entries in this category covered themes such as: connectivity solutions to overcome undersea avalanches of Africa’s West Coast generating outages on various subsea cable systems, as well as satellite services to recover from terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso.
- The Best Wholesale Operator Award covered entries from all parts of the world, Africa, Germany, Egypt, Indonesia, Poland, Bahrain, etc.
- The multi-orbit satellite strategy, encompassing LEO, MEO, GE, LTE/5G and Wifi, was a recurring theme in the Satellite Telecoms Award. ]This year’s themes such as the unserved, the unbanked, the digital divide and bridging digital skills were present in quite a few award categories, namely in the Best Operator in a Growth Market, the Beyond Connectivity as well as the Best Wholesale and the Platform Award.One particular entry description touched me. It presented the deployment of affordable outdoor public Wifi networks in post and bank offices, shops and schools in remote Indian villages aiming to bridge the digital divide: “Villagers earlier would often travel many kilometers to nearby towns to get digitally connected and earn income”.
- One of the telco industries awards I personally am most proud of is the Social Contribution Award. It is a merit that our industry not only exists to generate turnover and profit, but also serves many social goals, whether altruistically or otherwise. Various technologies for social goods became a widespread theme in the WCA as in mobile money platforms; earthquake detecting sensors and disaster messaging services; books reading apps in native language addressing illiteracy.Also, vulnerable populations get empowered with programs such as developing ICT schools for students and seniors, trainings for persons with disabilities and financial literacy and ICT courses for women.
- The adjacent category, the People and Culture Award, contains submissions which put forward the theme technology with a heart (“technology moves forward but no one is left behind”), fostering a culture of innovation by encouraging employees to identify critical points and propose innovative products and solutions to address the shortcomings.
- The expanding challenge of climate change is a topic that is taken seriously in our sector. The Sustainability Award proves this, not only in traditional CSR / net zero type of executive statements, but also in concrete applications and programs aiming to generate immediate results: radiative outputs of LTE base stations; optimization of CPU load of cloud servers, cooling systems and radio energy consumption when not in use; conducting positive business behavior through employee participation via sustainability programs such as planting of thousands of mangroves.
- Entries in the Total Experience Award category, representing an integrated customer, employee and partner’s approach, provide diverse solutions for a variety of shortcomings across end-to-end journey and customer touch points: estimated lead time to connect versus pre-sales estimations; issue detection accuracy; mean time to know user experience issues; average response times; billing related calls; etc.One CSP claimed to leverage more than 1 billion customer data via AI in order to enhance the 5G customer experience!
- We also notice in many different award categories that there is increasing customer satisfaction focus, as well as citing Glassdoor and Trustpilot ratings.The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is now fully established as a CX measuring instrument. Although the Judges sometimes questioned the sky high NPS results presented in some submissions: 70 to 80+ scores were no exception. In many cases, unfortunately, not sufficient context data is shared regarding the type of satisfaction survey, the total number of respondents, the type of services surveyed, etc. This may partly make it not always that credible!
- Finally, the Startup Award, perhaps the most exciting judging category, involves independent assessment of the initial entries, live presentations of the year shortlisted contestants, followed by an intensive judge meeting with Q&A’s. The entries embraced many different areas and audacious solutions: smart parking analytics; granular mobile coverage maps; autonomous networks of network etc. We do hope that some of these companies will make it from an idea at the kitchen table idea to successful quoted companies.
In terms of entry format and presentation, the Judges are pleased to see increasingly personalized entrants’ video’s, which are embedded in the various on-line submissions. In these video pitches, executives are doing their utmost to convince the Judges why their contribution should win the respective award. A convincing visual testimonial sometimes makes the ultimate difference between winning or losing. We wish our industry a successful, innovative, and peaceful year ahead! Reflections on the World Communication Awards | Total Telecom
