Telco Innovation Awards 2025: How to Craft a Winning Application

October 2024

Telecoms & Connectivity

Sam Barker

VP of Telecoms Market Research

Today, Juniper Research launched the Future Digital Awards for Telco Innovation 2025; an annual programme which celebrates the innovators and disruptors in telecommunications and connectivity markets. Now in its fifth year in its current format, the Future Digital Awards programme continues to grow year-on-year, including a rising number of applications and awards categories.

Each year we look to ensure that our awards programme remains up to date with the most significant trends in telecommunications and connectivity, so this year we are pleased to announce that we will be adding the following categories:

• Telecoms Cloud Innovation
• Sustainability in Telecommunications Innovation
• Travel eSIM Innovation

The Judging Process

With the awards now open for telecoms and connectivity providers, Juniper Research would like to explain how we arrive at our list of winners each year. Once the awards open, entrants can submit their applications – free of charge – via our online application form, which can be found here.

Our assessment process has been designed to be comprehensive and consistent. We consider several factors, but we focus on a product's innovation or the disruptive potential of new solutions in its given market. Every application is scored using the same criteria to create a robust and objective comparison for all entries across all categories.

Once submitted, each entry is rigorously assessed by our judging panel, which comprises of our in-house analysts and knowledge experts in fields such as messaging, roaming, networking, and connectivity services.

What Are We Looking For?

The judging process is based on the below range of criteria:

1. Product Features & Benefits

The backbone of any product is the benefits it can bring to its users; our judges are looking for applications that provide disruption through increased benefits or convenience. We are not necessarily looking for the most established services or solutions, but those which have evolved or improved over the past 12 months.

2. Product Innovation

Information on how your product disrupts a market is key to ensuring your entry stands out. For example, offering news on unique product features, improving the user experience, or disrupting established market dynamics, will be scored highly by our judging panel. Successful entries often provide details of how their solution differs from incumbents and the benefits they have brought or are expected to bring.

3. Partnerships

Our judging panel understands that partnerships are often key to new product launches or service expansion; Juniper Research’s Future Digital Awards programme welcomes applications based on partnerships between specialists from different fields who work together to provide novel solutions that look to change the field's status quo.

4. Launches

Giving our judging panel case studies and information on product launches helps us better assess the level of innovation of your product or solution. Including information on where a product has launched, or is expected to launch, enables us to more accurately evaluate the potential impact in the future.

5. Compliance & Certification

Compliance with industry standards is critical to many telecommunications technologies and provides an ideal platform for growth. In addition, the burgeoning relationship between telecommunications, network technologies and other technologies, such as financial services, continues to grow; meaning that standards from other industries are becoming increasingly noteworthy to future launches.

6. Future Business Prospects

Once all other information has been reviewed, Juniper Research’s in-house knowledge experts will make an assessment of the impact of the solution on the market. Our judging panel analyses markets and technologies and speaks to leading companies within their respective fields.

These categories are equally weighted.

Once the initial scoring is complete, the entries with the highest scores are subject to further review amongst our knowledge experts, with a final decision agreed upon by the panel. Members of our team will contact the winners of the awards in December 2024, and the final winners will be announced in early 2025.

How Your Company Can Benefit from the Future Digital Awards

Winners of our Future Digital Awards benefit from an independent assessment of their solution’s strength and innovation against their competitors, providing a platform for greater visibility to highlight the benefits of their products.

If Juniper Research awards your company a Future Digital Award, there are several options for promoting your Future Digital Awards win. Our winners will be provided digital assets to promote your award on social media or any channel you wish to use, including a digital certificate and banners.

Juniper Research has worked with previous winners on additional marketing materials such as whitepapers, our own social media posts, and co-hosted webinars. In addition, Juniper Research can provide a physical trophy which can be delivered to your office of choice.

For more information on the Future Digital Awards, you can email us at info@juniperresearch.com or visit the website.

Good luck!

As VP of Telecoms Market Research at Juniper Research, Sam produces research on telecommunications technologies and the future of digital content - with recent reports covering CPaaS, 5G Satellite Networks, and Mobile Messaging. He has also been interviewed by leading media outlets, including the BBC and Wall Street Journal, and is a regular contributor to messaging conferences and telecommunications industry events.