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| Sunday, 16 March 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Dialog recognised for the third time Dialog GSM won its third consecutive world award at the 2003 GSM Association Award Ceremony in France recently, becoming the only operator in the world to win three consecutive awards at the annual GSM World Congress. It won the previous awards in 2001 and 2002. The network won this award for the 'Best Use of Wireless for Emergency Situations' for the SMS Blood Appeal, Matching and Donor Management Application. It was developed with support and guidance from the National Blood Transfusion Service and the World Health Organisation. The facility enables mobile phone users to register as blood donors via SMS (Short Messaging Services). Emergency blood requests via SMS prompt the application to match against donors and generate blood donation alerts. The application, billed as the first mobile phone SMS-based blood donor network in the world, beat operators from France, Turkey and the Czech Republic to win this award. Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, CEO MTN Networks, the operator of Dialog GSM, told a news conference held in Colombo to announce this achievement, that they have already made 800 registrations for the service which got under way in July 2002. "We are trying to increase our database and need public support in this endeavour. We hope that this initiative will be followed by other operators in the world for the greater good of the community," he said. The GSM Association is the world body for the GSM industry, which has over 690 second and third generation wireless network operators and manufacturers servicing over 800 million customers in over 192 countries. Over 400 entries were received for this year's awards, which were sponsored by Intel. Wijayasuriya also announced the launch of international gateway operations by the company under the brand name Dialog Global. An international calling card was launched and international calling rates in the Dialog GSM network slashed in this regard. The card provides prepaid access to international services through any fixed or mobile phone to over 100 countries. MTN Networks is a fully-owned subsidiary of Telekom Malaysia. The company, which started operations in Sri Lanka in 1995, now offers about 70 products. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
