Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel has been awarded "Best Content Service" for the Airtel IFFCO Farmer Information Dissemination platform and "Best Project Management" for the Gujarat E-Gram project at the World Communication Awards in London.

The Airtel-IFFCO Farmer Information Dissemination Platform project won the best content service award for its innovation and its ability to provide rural consumers with information regarding their livelihood requirements. The service empowers rural farmers by providing them with five free voice messages every day on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, diary farming, animal husbandry, rural health initiatives and fertiliser availability, through over 40,000 IFFCO societies. This is the first initiative of its kind in India, and is aimed at enhancing the farmers’ livelihood and their quality of life.

The platform has been created and is maintained by Airtel for IKSL (IFFCO Kisan Sanchar), the joint venture between Airtel and IFFCO. Other nominees in this category were Omnifone (Music Station), Orange/France Telecom (Orange Sports TV), Peperoni Software (Mobile Social Networking/Mobile Site Building), Tata Communications (Live Darshan - Blessings), and Turkcell (Hospital Reservation via SMS)

The Airtel E-gram Connectivity Infrastructure project is the largest village-level e-governance rural connectivity initiative. Under the project, Airtel partnered with the Gujarat government to set up telecom infrastructure by providing a comprehensive VSAT-based solution to connect panchayats and Common Service Centers (CSCs) across 13,716 villages in the state. The connected E-Grams and CSCs will deliver high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data services in the areas of e-agriculture, e-governance, e-health and e-education. Other nominees in this category included Alcatel Lucent, Comverse, Easynet, Orange Business Services, and TEO LT.

The World Communication Awards, instituted by Total Telecom in 1999, recognise companies and individuals responsible for innovations, achievements and new services in the global communication industry. They seek participation from all communications providers - traditional carriers, service providers, multimedia content providers or any organisation providing a communication service. The winners for all categories, with the exception of the Person of the Decade in Communications, are awarded by an independent panel of judges.