The Etisalat Group, United Arab Emirates (UAE) based telecommunications operators, walked away with three GSM Association (GSMA) Global Mobile Awards at last week’s Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain. The awards are regarded as the ‘Oscars’ of the telecoms sector are granted by industry-peers.
Etisalat won two GSMA awards in the ‘Best Mobile Health Innovation’ and ‘mWomen Best Mobile Product’ categories for its mobile health innovation Etisalat Mobile Baby. The Etisalat Commerce platform won the ‘Best Mobile Money Innovation’ award, making financial services accessible to many.
Additionally, Etisalat announced the successful completion of their trial, partnered with Alcatel-Lucent, to increase speeds on their commercial 4G LTE network.
The trial was the first mobile broadband connection in the UAE over a LTE network. It used Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio Small Cell architecture, providing hot-spot coverage in populated areas such as shopping malls, airports and sports stadiums.
Etisalat also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft. Their MoU sees their partnership for the new Windows Phone software launch with smartphone devices from selected manufacturers, targetting businesses and consumers in the Middle East and Africa region. The agreement facilitates developers in creating and publishing applications on the marketplace.
Etisalat’s participation at several conferences this year focussed on three key themes, intelligent data management for partnerships, their harnessing of technology to save the lives of pregnant mothers with its Mobile Baby initiative and their ‘broadband for all’ vision.
Ahmed Julfar, Etisalat CEO said, “[The] Mobile World Congress is the marketplace for the global telecommunications industry and not only did we demonstrate world leading technology development, but we were also recognised by our peers as global telecoms leaders by winning three GSMA Global Mobile Awards.
“This is a measure of the successful growth and expansion of Etisalat in to emerging markets across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and the impact and transformational effect our innovations have in turbo-charging economic and social development in the communities we serve.”
Nico Gous
Something that DiGi can learn…