The 2010 Finalists… for the 2010 Total Telecom’s World Communication Awards! Is your telecom, cellular, or IP communications service provider among the select few who made it to the Total Telecom World Communication Awards Short List? Let Techistan know and leave your comments. Congratulations!

Best Brand
Etisalat
Grameenphone
Idea Cellular
Telstra Enterprise & Government
Turk Telekom
Ufone
Verizon Business

Best Content Service
Afghan Wireless
Orange Business Services
TE Data
Turk Telekom
Turkcell

Best Customer Care
Bharti Airtel
BT
Etisalat Misr
Global Crossing
Orange Business Services
Tata Communications
TeliaSonera International Carrier

Best Managed Service
BT Group
Ericsson
Interoute
iPass
Orange Business Services
Tulip Telecom
Virtela Technology Services
Vodafone

Best Mobile Operator
Bharti Airtel
Maxis
Orange Business Services
Safaricom
TMN

Best New Service
Avea
Bharti Airtel
MTN Uganda
Orange Business Services
Sebit
Verizon Business

Best Operator in a Developing Market
Digicel Group
Etisalat Misr
Ezecom
Gateway Communications
Orange Business Services Africa
Viettel Cambodia

Best Project Management
Bharti Airtel
Orange Business Services
Subex
Tech Mahindra
Telstra

The Alireza Mahmoodshahi Technology Foresight Award
Arieso Ltd
BT Group
Cambridge Broadband Networks
Continuous Computing
IPWireless
Kineto Wireless
SK Telecom
Turkcell Technology

Best Mobile Device Strategy
Emtiac Mobile Solutions
Novatel Wireless
Turk Telekom

Best Wholesale Carrier
Bharti Airtel
BICS
BT Wholesale
China Telecom (Europe)
Colt
Tata Communications
TeliaSonera International Carrier

Best Global Operator
3
BT Global Services
Orange Business Services
PCCW Global
Virtela Technology Services Incorporated

Best Regional Operator
China Telecom (Europe)
Digicel Group
GTS Central Europe
Hutchison Global Communications
Interoute
Singapore Telecommunications
Viettel

The Green Award
Azercell Telecom
Batelco
BT Group
Colt
Orange Business Services
Telefonica O2 UK

Team of the Year
Azercell Telecom
Emtiac Mobile Solutions
Orange Business Services
Roshan
Turk Telekom
Turkcell

Many of the above communications services, products, tools, companies and applications are actively involved in peering and termination, SIP trunking and DID sales, on any of the following: Arbinet for termination or DIDXchange for origination. If your service provider is among these select World Communication Awards Short List, congratulate them! Add your comments here or on Facebook. Pass on the good news with Linkedin, Twitter by RT or with your original reposting.44

Remember the prototype phone that got the early sneak peek from Gizmodo? That is the now iPhone 4, but did you hear about the iPhone 3Gi?

Apple’s senior vice president Philipp Schiller says, “Those who really understand what we do here at Apple are going to love this new product. Unless, you know, they happen to be totally lame.”

It’s the kind of thing your middle school friends said to you to get you to do things your parents told you not to do.

It’s like a religion, and Apple has millions of fundamentalist fanatics.

The device has highest processing speeds, multi-touch interface, finer color resolution, thinnest size, ability to open dozens of apps at once, a high definition video camera, one-tap editing, supposedly an easy cut and paste option, near real-time language translation during audio or text chat conversation, the touch feature is always accurate, its battery is good for up to 96 hours, you can key in object tracking for up to 5 inanimate objects, is available in over 22 countries and soon the world, and it automatically goes to voicemail when inside a moving vehicle.

And it sold more than 8 million units on the first day. Just joking (via TheOnion with a few additions by Techistan).

On the other hand, the iPhone 4 is real.  Apple is like a religion, and Apple does have millions of fundamentalist fanatics who will do anything for Apple products and feel that any other attitude would be mortal sin.

The iPhone 4 has a gyroscopic sensor that assists the device to know how it is moved and to react to the movement. Its digital compass is used to measure the strength and/or direction of the magnetic field in the vicinity of the instrument. It determines direction relative to the Earth’s magnetic poles. The additional microphone at the top of the unit is available for noise cancellation.

Two separate cameras, one on the back for capturing pictures in low-light conditions and with an LED flash capable of staying lit for video recording at 720p resolution and one of the front for VGA photos and video recording, great for video conferencing. The iPhone 4 feature of being able to use video over wifi is called “Facetime.”

Situated on the right side of the device is a slot where its MicroSIM is located. A SIM card enabels users to change phones by simply removing the SIM card from one mobile phone and inserting it into another mobile phone or broadband telephony device.

In the USA, the iPhone 4 just like previous are purchased locked; whereas, four major carriers in Australia, Optus, Telstra, Three and Vodafone, offer the option of an unlocked phone. In other countries, such as China, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan,  New Zealand and Russia, vendors sell iPhones that are not locked to any carrier. (How could this increase the average revenue per user in the end for mobile carriers and operators at the end of the day?)

Read what people and bots are saying about iPhone 4 on Twitter from @Techistan.

Come and join us for the upcoming MobileMonday Singapore networking party at Harry’s @ Esplanade on Monday, 14 June 2010 during the annual CommunicAsia tradeshow proudly sponsored by Dialogic. Participants will meet MobileMonday Asia founders and other international delegates such as DIDXchange, Starhub, Telstra, Genusys, Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, Metaswitch, Nexus Telecom, Octtel, PCCW, Reve Systems and Skype.

Attendance is free; all you need to do is to register for the event. Book now to avoid being left out!

6.00pm-7.00pm Registration and Pre-Networking
7.00pm-7.20pm Innovation in Mobile presentations and discussion
7.20pm-9.00pm Cocktail and Networking Party
9.00pm End
DIDXchange is a media partner for CommunicAsia 2010. The wholesale DID (direct inward dialing voip phone numbers) marketplace at www.didx.net is responsible for hundreds of IP technologies and communications entrepreneurs, telecom carriers and social online community portal CXOs choice to participate in CommunicAsia 2010. It highly recommends attending the MobileMonday events around the world during conferences it partners with at http://www.didx.net/events.

On the first day of March 2010 Han Kotterman, chief of strategy for Telstra‘s Hong Kong telco CSL, discussed Hong Kong’s telco situation with *Business Spectator’s Isabelle Oderberg. CSL is in the midst of possibly moving towards 4G. It has already spent $523 million on Hong Kong license fees. End-users expect unlimited data packages, so how to stand out above the other four Hong Kong operators? Service and the speed of networks!

Telstra’s CSL has 2.6 million customers out of a population of seven million in Hong Kong. As of 1999, Hong Kong is part of the People’s Republic of China with a 167 per cent penetration rate. What next?

Han Kotterman shared, “Hong Kong has five operators and it’s one of the most competitive markets in the world. As you mentioned, it’s got seven million customers and five operators vying for those customers. So, growing market share, per se, is not that easy. That doesn’t mean that you can’t grow the base of customers. Yes, there are opportunities to grow from a market share perspective in areas where you perform better than your competitors and you have an advantage over them, but that is marginal. It fluctuates here and there, but not by much.

What’s more important is how to capture the growth, and the growth comes in a variety of ways. And growth, as I’ve mentioned before, is currently coming predominantly from growth in data. As you mentioned, there is a proliferation of handsets that now enable data usage – the smart phones. More and more customers are starting to use these smart phones and also to like the capabilities that these smart phones offer. So when you’re talking about growing the market, you’re talking about making customers that were very voice-centric customers that are now voice and data-centric. We see, over the next couple of years, the voice market really becoming a commodity, if it isn’t already a commodity. The data market is the important one to capture.

We’ve put in an infrastructure that allows us to capture the data market. The data market comes, first of all, from phone customers – normal voice customers that are using data on their mobile phones – but then also from customers that use mobile data as their access to the Internet. We facilitate that by providing the customers with what we call a ‘dongle’ or a USB modem. That USB modem allows them to give their computer access to the internet. In addition, what we have done lately is we’ve started to foray into more fixed mobile convergence solutions like a wireless HSDPA routing.”

The company’s chief strategy officer also states that number one, they are investing in a network that Hong Kong customers deserve and the second is that they can monetize by upgrading for the future. First, they plan to install LTE (Long Term Evolution), making available up to hundred megabits per second downloads.

Mr. Kotterman continued, “The way Telstra has done it – and other operators around the world have done it – is by providing different levels of usage and having customers pay for them. We’ve actually given them a speeds option, so they can actually use 3.6 megabits per second, they can use 7.2 megabits per second, or 21 megabits per second… for a premimum at different price points.”

Business Spectator’s Isabelle Oderberg asked,  “How do you measure the return on investment on the $523 million cost of getting the license for the LTE in Hong Kong? How do you actually justify it to shareholders?”

Read the Business Spectator to find out the chief strategy of Telstra’s CSL in Hong Kong, as well possible tie-ups in mainland China which is heavily regulated.

Telstra will be at International Telecoms Week in Washington DC May 24-26 and at CommunicAsia in Singapore June 15-16. Skype will also be at Communicasia. Techistan will be at both ITW in DC (see booth A378 with editor Suzanne Bowen) and CommunicAsia (booth 4P3-09).

*Established in 2007, Business Spectator is a real-time, 24-hours-a-day business news and commentary website based in Australia.