Ibrahim Ahmed

My editorial for our 10th anniversary special issue must begin with a salute to the Indian communications industry. It is because of all the love (and the hate, which we believe is genuine constructive feedback), support, guidance, and co-operation that we got, Voice&Data is what it is today-India's largest selling and most influential business magazine for the communications industry. On the one hand, we had our readers whose encouragement helped us improve the quality of information-that is why Voice&Data became the largest-selling communications magazine. On the other hand, our advertisers had full confidence in us. That gave Voice&Data more than 60 percent market share in networking- and telecom-related print advertising.

My publisher might not be very happy, but I must share with all my readers the secret to our leadership-both in terms of our readership as well as in terms of our market share in advertising. I strongly believe that this peek into our trade secrets will help our readers and advertisers understand how we look at opportunities in the communications space, and our strategies to grab them.

Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Voice&Data's core readers are the senior management professionals of telecom operators and service providers. Now, that is the most happening sector. And the role that these leaders are expected to play in nation building-where the crucial economic indicators will be size of domestic bandwidth and broadband penetration levels-is formidable. Most of our editorial content is designed for them.

Voice&Data's secondary readers are the CIOs of enterprises who are big time users of communications services or big spenders on telecom services. The top 5000 enterprises in the country thus get automatically covered. They are big spenders, very demanding, and look for the best solutions. They are the cream of the market. They are customers who play a big role in positively influencing the service provider's ARPU.

Another important role that we have taken upon ourselves is of creating networking and interaction opportunities for the various stakeholders in the communications space. Our first of the Top View series of seminars on bandwidth got the late Dewang Mehta and Nasscom to take up Operation Bandwidth-for lobbying with the government to get more bandwidth for the country. Similarly, our Top View series-Mobile Data Applications, QoS and SLAs, and Generating New Revenue Streams-generated industry-wide interest not only because experts got a chance and a forum to speak their minds, but also to exchange notes with each other. In an industry which is just taking off, networking and lobbying is essential.

And finally, we very strongly believe in involving our partners in all our editorial plans. For this, we take their inputs at the time of working on our editorial calendar. There is hardly a story, which goes to print without inputs from the industry. Industry leaders and visionaries write for us. We have brought to our readers, views and thoughts from some of the biggest and most famous global names in this business. There is no global CEO in the field who would have visited India and not met Voice&Data.

Obviously, all this was possible because we had everyone's support-whether service provider, equipment vendor, user, or policy maker. I would like to thank all of you once again, and look forward to a more interactive and fruitful relationship for all the years to come.

Ibrahim Ahmed