The award named after dr. Endre Magyari, one of the founding fathers of Hungarian radio broadcasting, is granted to two people every year on World Telecommunication Day in recognition of their contribution to the Hungarian infocommunications market. In 2018, the award winners are Zoltán Bánhidi, Senior Consultant of Telenor’s Regulatory Affairs Office, and Erika Madarász, NMHH expert.
The career of Zoltán Bánhidi has been closely entwined with the launch and development of Hungarian pager and mobile telecommunication systems since the 1990s. That time, he managed a paging services company then in 2005 he joined Telenor Hungary (then Pannon).
During the past 13 years, Zoltán Bánhidi was involved in all radio frequency auctions shaping the future of Hungary’s telecommunications industry. Currently, he is Senior Consultant of Telenor’s Regulatory Affairs Office and played a key role in reconfiguring the 900 MHz frequency band. His work enabled Hungary’s operators to migrate from fragmented spectrum blocks to coherent radio bands required for the launch of advanced broadband mobile services.
The reconfiguration process unprecedented in Europe was completed by Hungarian mobile operators without any network downtime. Zoltán Bánhidi played an outstanding role in planning, coordinating and implementing this process. His success is clearly shown by the fact that there was no increase in consumer complaints due to the retuning of frequencies.
The “Magyari Endre” award was granted also to NMHH expert Erika Madarász for her outstanding achievements in establishing the legal framework of ID management and number portability and in developing ID management databases.