CHICAGO -- Telephony magazine has named the winners of its second Telephony Innovation Awards. The awards recognize service providers who have developed unique or first-to-market offerings that utilize technology or address customer needs in a new way. The awards were presented at a special reception at Telephony LIVE - The 2008 Telecom Summit in Chicago on September 30.

"Telecom service providers are under enormous pressure to establish differentiated services in order to compete,” said Wayne Madden, publisher of Telephony. "We recognize companies who chose not to just follow the technology curve, but to bring their customers services that meet important needs in distinctive ways."

Focused on nine key categories, the award-winning innovations come in many forms, including design, delivery, pricing bundling, packaging or customer service. The Telephony Innovation Awards are determined by market segment. The winners include;

Most Innovative Broadband Wireless Service AND Most Innovative Small Business Serivce : Towerstream’s WiMAX offering: Towerstream’s WiMAX service was the first double winner in the two-year history of the Telephony Innovation Awards,” said Telephony Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson. “I think this speaks to how far ahead of the market our judges believe Towerstream to be in using this wireless technology to deliver broadband access to businesses.”

Most Innovative Enterprise Service: Verizon Business is the winner of the 2008 Telephony Innovation Award for Most Innovative Enterprise Service for its Verizon Enterprise Center, an online portal that provides a one-stop resource to communicate, monitor, make changes and report on Verizon Business services giving customers the control to help manage their daily business functions.

“Verizon has done a great job of enhancing its customer portal over the past 12-18 months,” said Cindy Whelan, analyst with Current Analysis and one of the Telephony Innovation Award judges. “The portal offers a wealth of information to customers with a particular eye to enhancing features for multinational users.”