ISPA Awards 2012 Winners Crowned
Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) were crowned Internet Hero at the 14th annual ISPA Awards on the 3rd July, while The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) were unveiled as Internet Villain. B4RN were victorious for bringing high speed internet into remote rural communities, setting an example for others to follow, while the ITU were deemed the villain for their internet governance land grab.
The big winners this year were Fluidata, who collected Best Business Fixed Broadband for a second year running and the Managed Service Innovation award, and KC who won Best Business Customer Service, and were highly commended in Safety & Security. In its inaugural year, the Customer Choice Award went to MacAce who scored highest amongst their customers to take the prize and Hyperoptic were unveiled as Best New ISP in another new category. Other winners on the night included Plusnet, who won Best Consumer Fixed, and Fidonet, who took home the Best Large Hosting Award.
The black tie ceremony was compered by comedian John Moloney and the evening kicked off with opening addresses from Dr Peter Cochrane, an entrepreneur and futurist, and Tom Scott, a tech TV presenter.
For details of the winners and for more information and photos go to www.ispaawards.org.uk.
Seven New Members Join ISPA
Metronet www.metronet-uk.com, Xifos Limited www.xifos.net, Sparta Telecom www.spartatelecom.com, Onwave UK Limited www.onwave.co.uk, LN Communications Ltd www.lncomms.co.uk, Rural Communications Solutions Limited www.ruralinternet.co.uk and Recombu www.recombu.com in the last few weeks.
The new members joined following recent ISPA events including the Manchester Seminar and the ISPA Awards. The event in Manchester provided companies with an update on the latest regulatory and policy developments for the industry. Speakers included ISPA Council Member’s James Blessing and Gary Hough.
For comments from the new members and existing members on reasons for joining ISPA click here. For more information on joining ISPA please contact www.ispa.org.uk, admin@ispa.org.uk or 020 3397 3308.
Magrathea Suggest you can Still Look to the Past for Future Growth
Many of you may ask why we are suggesting an ISP – naturally aligned to VoIP telephony solutions – consider including the more traditional telephony solutions such as Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and Carrier Pre-Select (CPS).
The ever evolving technologies surrounding our industry will always put some products or services out of date however if these solutions are still in demand and offer choice, cost effectiveness and customer retention opportunities, they should not be disregarded.
For example, WLR can be taken on a line only basis enabling you to install broadband and provision a VoIP solution without the customer receiving a separate bill from BT for their line rental. You can make some large savings with Magrathea’s competitive line rental deal.
You can also tap into those customers who aren’t ready to make the leap to a fully IP based solution by adding CPS to your offering. Taking over the pricing and management of all outbound calls for your customers that insist on keeping their BT line. By adding CPS you make sure even calls made on lines that are kept “for back up” are made via you.
WLR and CPS are tried and tested, simple to implement and cost effective solutions that could help you offer a more complete package, so don’t rule it out just because it’s been around a few years!
Return Path Sponsors the Internet Safety & Security Award at the ISPAs
Return Path recently launched the world’s largest ISP Anti-Phishing Program including leading ISPs such as AOL, Libero, Microsoft, Synacor, UOL, and Yahoo!. The program enables ISPs to adopt the new DMARC email authentication standard more quickly, protect end-users against malicious attacks, protect their own brand against spear phishing and improve trust in email. Benefits to ISP program participants include:
- Assistance with deployment of email authentication and DMARC standards
- Generation of authentication reports for inbound/outbound emails
- Enforcement of phishing protection policies
Return Path is the global leader in email certification and anti-phishing solutions. With an extensive data cooperative network of over 70 of the world’s largest ISPs, Return Path receives data on more phishing attacks than any other industry player, covering over 2.2 billion inboxes worldwide.
ISPs wishing to participate can apply here: www.returnpath.net/internetserviceprovider/apply. Return Path is sponsoring the Internet Safety and Security Award at the ISPA Awards.
ISPA Awards’ Sponsors
ISPA would like to thank all the sponsors for helping make the Awards possible. If you would like a directly contact any of the sponsors please email awards@ispa.org.uk.
The full list if 2012 sponsors was CISAS www.cisas.org.uk, Geo Networks www.geo-uk.net, Magrathea www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk, O2 Wholesale www.o2.co.uk/wholesale and Return Path www.returnpath.net.
ISPA is also offering anyone who signs up within a month of the 2012 awards 10% off ISPA 2013 sponsorship packages. See information about sponsorship here or email awards@ispa.org.uk.
Discount for Members
In September and October there is discount for members at the following events; IP in the Digital Environment Conference; Apps World Europe 2012; Convergence Summit South; NextGen 2012; the Internet Retailing Conference; and Retail Week Ecommerce Summit.
More information on the ISPA Events Calendar www.ispa.org.uk/events/calendar/.
ISPA News Coverage
ISPA was quoted in the news on issues including; copyright, the Defamation Bill, the Communications Data Bill, Online Parental Controls and the ISPA Awards. Full coverage here.
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