Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata PLC, clinched two Global awards at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona Spain.
The lineup of Global Award winners and nominees featured the world’s leading mobile operators, innovators and solutions providers. The global mobile industry converges in 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 2 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 inter-operable 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” said Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Director and Group Chief Executive of Dialog Axiata PLC. “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. ,” added Dr. Wijayasuriya
Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya 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 lineup 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 ZuckerbergChairman 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 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”.
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 5 on both occasions.
