Qtel has won a 'Special Achievement in GIS' award at the world-renowned Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI's) 24th Annual User Conference in San Diego. GIS is an information system designed to analyse and use data related to a geographical location. For example, in the telecommunications industry, GIS helps Qtel determine a customer's nearest pay phone or cable network, or the best location to set up a new customer service center. Speaking about Qtel's 'Special Achievement in GIS' award, CEO, Dr. Nasser Marafih said, "Being chosen to achieve this special award is a real honour for Qtel. It highlights the importance of the work we do and ensures that our contributions in GIS will be shared with the global community. This serves not only to promote Qtel globally but promotes the state of Qatar and the advanced world-class technology we embrace." "Our GIS technology helps us to bring the people of Qatar closer together and to offer higher levels of customer service more efficiently, effectively and allowing for better decision making," he continued. Qtel was selected from over 100,000 GIS users worldwide for the award, which recognises Qtel's effective use of the Geographical Information System (GIS) to manage its advanced telecommunications network. Qtel has fast developed GIS technology to help in tracking the location and characteristics of their outside infrastructure and improving access to information when engineering new projects. The company has made rapid strides to improve customer satisfaction through GIS by providing useful applications for managing different aspects of Qtel services in residential wireline, GSM networks, inter-exchange transmissions, cable TV coverage, ADSL coverage, pay phone planning and management.
The company has also developed a Telecommunication Access Network Management System (TEAMS), which successfully converted massive amounts of data and drawings and over 30,000 documents into a digital format. The 'TEAMS' application is designed to manage the Qtel network and to automate the entire workflow making it faster and more efficient to access geographical data linked to the construction of roads, setting up network cables and other underground work, etc and for processing building permit applications.
Qtel's GIS mapping system, enables customer numbers to be used digitally to combine and document useful customer information such as the premise area, street, building and floor level which further improves customer service and reduces customer waiting times.
The award was presented to Mr. Ali Al-Derbasti, Senior Manager Access Network Operation and Mr. Krishna Kumar Subramaniam, Senior GIS Analyst during a ceremony on 12 August 2004 in San Diego, California, United States.
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© Press Release 2005
