February 25, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Anti-spam efforts and the organizations spearheading those movements were honored at this year's annual UK Internet Industry Awards, held by the Internet Service Providers Association, UK (ispa.co.uk).
The sixth annual ISPAs were held last week at a gala dinner in London, honoring industry leaders in a range of categories under from three divisions - ISP, Supplier and Special Awards.
Brightmail (brightmail.com), an international anti-spam software provider with offices in the UK, won the category for the Best Third Party Application. Brightmail provides software to industry leaders including AT&T WorldNet, EarthLink, MSN and Verizon Online. Other finalists in the category included IP Support, Mirapoint, Vytec Solutions and Zeus.
"In a year that has seen the prevention of spam emerge as a major issue, the judges considered that the services offered by Brightmail are important to the internet industry," the ISPA stated on its Web site. "As a company, Brightmail are keen to speak to customers and ISPs and have significantly raised awareness of spam and spam-related issues."
Another award reflecting the anti-spam sentiment brewing in the UK was the Internet Hero award. Anti-spam leader Steve Linford, of Spamhaus (spamhaus.org), was named the Internet Hero "for educating people about spam, endeavoring to thwart spammers and urging the US to reject the opt-out approach to spam legislation "
On the flip side, one person was nominated for his efforts to silence the debate on spam and the Internet. However, MP Derk Wyatt, wasn't named the Internet Villian. That award went to VeriSign for "for their presumption that they own the Internet and the domain name system hijacking scandal."
Other ISPA winners included Web host Mistral Internet (mistral.co.uk), which offers a service-based company with its own network, designed from the ground up to carry business-grade Internet traffic.
Mistral is a full member of LINX with peering agreements with major International networks, and boasts the fastest connection rates in the UK including ADSL and ISDN2. Its customer base includes giants such as Guardian Internet, Citizen Watches, Encyclopedia Britannica, Blockbuster and Microsoft.
With a dedicated suite at Telehouse Europe (telehouse.co.uk), Mistral says it is able to provide high specification space within a managed environment, including high level security, power resilience and diverse communication services. Its enterprise hosting facility is based at Global Switch (globalswitch.com) in London, which provides a range of services from being a data center, providing data storage and disaster recovery rooms, through to telecommunications environments ideal for voice and data transmission and colocation.
"The judges were impressed with the management of Mistral's growth throughout 2003 which has not affected the quality of service Mistral provides," the ISPA stated on its Web site. "Customers remain satisfied with this ISP, which performed very well during the independent technical monitoring period."
Other finalists, selected after the ISPAs reviewed hard data provided by an independent and objective organisation, for the Best Web Hosting category included Easynet, Freenetname, NDO, Netscalibur, and UK Online.
Other winners in other categories included Easynet for the Best Business ISP and Best National Business ISP; Google for the Best Search Facility; Telewest Blueyonder for the Best Unmetered Dial-up ISP; Bulldog for the Best Consumer Broadband and Fibernet for the Best Carrier. Linx won Best Internet Exchange, Tiscali won Best Metred ISP, Fastnet won Best Small Business ISP,Freeserve won Best National Consumer ISP and Electronic Frontier won Best Hardware.
