The UK Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (UKWISPA), which is the official trade body for wireless broadband ISPs, WiFi hotspot providers and associated networks, recently unveiled the winners of their annual awards event – the UKWISPA Awards 2024.
The annual event is naturally intended to celebrate the best wireless internet providers across the sector, although quite a few of this year’s winners have increasingly started to focus on FTTP instead of wireless builds – often via a complementary approach.
Sadly, the organisation’s award page reveals nothing about how the awards themselves were chosen or judged (i.e. take them with a pinch of salt), which makes it difficult to cover them. But the headline winners seemed to be Quickline and Voneus, which are jointly listed as having won the award for ‘Best Hybrid Fibre / Wireless Project‘. The rest of the winners can be found below.
Advertisement
UKWISPA Award Winners 2024
Best Hybrid Fibre / Wireless Project
Quickline CommunicationsBest Hybrid Fibre / Wireless Project
VoneusBest Community Engagement
Country ConnectBest Customer Experience
W3ZBest Customer Experience
Juice BroadbandBest Gigabit Wireless Project
VoneusBest Urban Deployment Project
GigaAirRural Hero
Rural CommunicationsInnovation
Cromarty Firth Wireless NetworksOutstanding Team Member
Liam Laird (marykirk.com)
UPDATE 12:28pm
We’ve had the official press release from UKWISPA, which reveals that the judging panel comprises of the 8 Advisory board members of UKWISPA, who all voted on each nomination “where non-conflicted“.
Advertisement
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Would ISP Review consider running an investigation into these telecoms businesses and their award organisations that like to dole out awards with very little, if any, actual relevant evidence of the individual company’s excellence in the field?
The sector seems to be overrun with self-congratulatory awards and communities have long argued that the awards are rarely, if ever, deserved. It seems that if a company is willing to pay for a stand or a table at these junkets, their business name goes into a hat to win a prize.
No because there’s nothing to investigate. Every industry of any scale has its own internal awards ceremonies (most of them you’ll never hear about), which is normal. Yes, it can often be a bit of a pat on the back exercise, but they’re free to do that and there’s really no reason to be terribly bothered by them.
Disagree with Mark’s comment ‘no reason to be terribly bothered’.
These awards misrepresent companies to the public, public perception of our sector is in the toilet, we should all be ‘bothered’.
What purpose does the UKwispa actually have? It seems a made up organisation to pat companies on the back, could you please advise of what the companies have to do to become a member, and the cost, and the benefits to the company and the public? And what UKwispa do to ensure the members are relevant and worthwhile? It appears to be a advertising backdrop for the members.
Where was the ceremonies for the winners? Maybe a dinner evening? Probably not.