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Monday, 9 March 2015 00:29 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya (left) delivers a keynote at the Mobile World Congress while Dialog Axiata eZ Cash Head of Operations Fariq Cader receives the Global Award for the Best Mobile Money Service from GSMA Chairman and Telenor Group President/CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas (R) and awards show presenter and actor John Cleese.
Dialog Axiata Head of PSI Venura Mendis receives the Global Award for the Best NFC and Mobile Money Service from CEO GSMA John Hoffman (R) and awards show presenter and actor John Cleese
Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata PLC clinched two global awards at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona Spain. The line-up of global award winners and nominees featured the world’s leading mobile operators, innovators and solutions providers. The Global mobile industry converges on Barcelona annually, for the Mobile World Congress, with the 2015 edition attracting a record 93,000 delegates and over 2,000 exhibitors. Sri Lanka’s premier mobile payment network eZ Cash beat out worldwide competition to win the Global Award for the Best Mobile Money Service. eZ Cash connects close to two million Sri Lankan mobile users with 16,500 merchants and service providers through the country’s largest mobile payment and transaction gateway. eZ Cash has the distinction of being the first mobile money system in the world to be end-to-end interoperable across multiple service providers. Mobile subscribers of Dialog, Etisalat and Hutch have seamless access to the full portfolio of eZ Cash services, bringing forward a combined subscriber base of over 14 million Sri Lankans who could transact electronically via eZ Cash. “Mobile money and payment is a high-profile subject across the global mobile industry, and we are indeed humbled to have been judged the winner of the global award this year,” Dialog Axiata PLC Director and Group Chief Executive Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said. “This is a true Sri Lankan victory – founded on the progressive and innovative policy environment established by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and the TRCSL, combined with the trusted governance and stewardship of our custodial bank HNB, participation of our peer service providers Etisalat and Hutch, prowess of a cutting-edge mobile transaction platform developed in Sri Lanka by the Dialog team, and an expansive eco-system of partnerships bringing together a wide portfolio of merchants and service providers. “In addition to an ever-expanding portfolio of retailers, utility providers and internet merchants, eZ Cash connects Sri Lankan mobile subscribers to a range of e-services provided by the Government of Sri Lanka via the LankaGate transaction gateway of the ICTA. We are singularly appreciative of the collaboration and partnership extended to us by all our partners and it is a privilege to share this honour with them all,” Dr. Wijayasuriya added. He also featured as a keynote speaker during the Mobile World Congress, and elucidated the future positioning of the mobile phone as the “single secure identity” of global citizens and the particular relevance of the mobile identity in developing countries. The line-up of key note speakers at the Mobile World Congress featured a galaxy of ICT industry leaders from across the mobile and internet industries. Flagship sessions at the congress included addresses by Vittorio Colao – CEO of Vodafone, Rajeev Suri – President and CEO of Nokia, Brian Krzanich CEO of Intel, Mark Zuckerberg Chairman and CEO of Facebook, Bill McDermott – CEO of SAP and Jimmy Wales – Founder of Wikipedia, alongside many other industry luminaries. Dialog returned to the podium for a second time during the high-profile Global Mobile Awards ceremony which is billed as the ‘Oscars’ of the global mobile industry, to take away the Global Award for ‘Best Technology Enabler’. The World Award winner in this category, Dialog’s Ideamart platform manifests an innovative solution to the ‘opening up’ of mobile networks to the application development and enterprise solution development communities. “Ideamart brings together world class thought leadership and platform innovation with the unbridled innovation energy of the Sri Lankan application development community,” said Dr. Wijayasuriya. “It is most rewarding to see a simple idea seeded some three years ago growing to an eco-system of over 2,000 developers and 100 start-up businesses, and now reaching the pinnacle of being recognised as a winner from amongst the world’s best technology enablers. As in the case of eZ Cash, here again we share this global honour with an all-Sri Lankan cast – our platform development partner HSenid, Sri Lanka’s application development community, participant businesses, and the innovators at Dialog,” he added. In naming Dialog’s Ideamart, the awards judging panel recognised in particular the empowerment delivered via the platform to the wider application development community featuring youth and small business segments. Sri Lanka last secured success at the World Awards in 2003 when Dialog won a Global Award for its ‘Blood Matching & SMS Alert’ service developed in response to the dengue epidemic earlier that year. In 2003, Dialog completed three successive wins on the world stage spanning 2001-2003 during the early years of GSM industry evolution. Since then Dialog was nominated for world awards in 2007 and 2011 ending up in the top five on both occasions. The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with more than 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The annual Global Mobile Awards serves as a platform to recognise world leaders in the sector who spawn inventive thinking that will drive the industry over the next two decades.
