Inside the IIT Madras campus, spread across a thou-sand acres, one needs to travel a bit to reach a depart ment. Don’t be surprised if you see quite a bit of wildlife en route—ranging from rare spotted deer to an occasional macaw.

Camouflaged amid these tranquil environs is the department of electrical engineering that has gained worldwide recognition now, thanks to its head who has pioneered a communication revolution of sorts. Meet Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the professor whose thoughts have been inspiring his students for decades.

Jhunjhunwala wears many hats—professor, department of electrical engineering and head TeNet Lab IIT, Chennai; the brain behind corDECT; technology evangelist; speaker; and writer... the list goes on. Despite the laurels and accolades, Dr Jhunjhunwala epitomizes what simplicity is and remains truly down to earth. He prefers chappals instead of shoes, does not wear branded outfits, and drives around the city on an old Bajaj Chetak.

In the Beginning
When Jhunjhunwala started his noble mission called TeNet (telecommunications and computer networks group) years ago, many thought it would flounder. But the TeNet group, despite a humble origin, defied the critics in time and went on to become one of the finest research bodies in the country promoting telecommunication technologies and fostering fledgling startup initiatives in this space. One of the biggest contributions of Dr Jhunjhunwala and TeNet is the corDECT technology. For the uninitiated, corDECT is a WLL standard aimed at providing converged services—voice and data—at an affordable cost to the masses, irrespective of the location. It simplifies last-mile connectivity and enables wireless remote access. When the idea was conceived nearly a decade ago, it looked rosy enough on paper, but turning it into reality was indeed a daunting task.

In the very beginning, TeNet members were faced with major challenges. Arriving at an affordable cost-effective new telephone line was the first impediment. During the early nineties, the service provider had to incur a cost of Rs 40,000 for providing a new telephone line to a remote location. But if TeNet were to offer a technology at this cost, adoption in large numbers was impossible. One needed to bring the cost factor down by three times and roll out a technology that could do data and voice concurrently. Overall, one had to offer everything at a cost of Rs 10,000 per line.

The next question: where to start?
 A technology roll-out needs people, devices, equipments, standards, et al. Jhunjhunwala invited the IIT alumni and incubated companies. So in 1994, Jhunjhunwala roped in six former IITians and launched Midas Communications. They were to develop a communication device that worked 24x7 at a cost of Rs 10,000 per line to the service provider. None of them had prior experience in developing a converged access product. More importantly, they did not have any hard cash to fund their initiative. Jhunjhunwala’s optimism finally paid off. Four companies that believed in TeNet’s vision—Crompton Greaves, Himachal Futuristic Communications (HFCL), Shyam Telecom, and Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) extended Rs 4 crore towards advance licensing fee.

When Jhunjhunwala met Ray Stata, chairman of the US semiconductor major Analog Devices, he pitched his vision behind corDECT. Stata, highly impressed with Jhunjhunwala’s forward-looking thoughts, extended his support by committing the design and supply of chipsets for corDECT.

A Technology Was Born
CorDECT was thus born, countering skeptics and the policy makers who initially doubted the viability of the technology. This technology has drastically brought down the cost of putting a new telephone line, and hence is a boon to a developing geography like India. It gives a subscriber a fixed wireless connection, providing both a telephone and also a 35–75 kbps Internet connection, resulting in a low-cost DSL connectivity. The significance of this technology is that it uses wireless for the last-mile connectivity. Hence, even the remotest parts can be given connectivity without relying on copper.

The corDECT system was first deployed in rural areas in February 2000 in which around 65 villages in Kuppam Taluk in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh were connected to a radius of 25 km. Today, the Kuppam model has become a sort of reference for the success of corDECT. But despite the deliverables of the technology, initially the telecom operators were slow or reluctant to deploy corDECT and provide telephony in rural areas, mainly because they did not see profits there. But things soon changed as MTNL and BSNL saw the benefits and started adopting corDECT in a big way. For instance, BSNL has provided more than six lakh telephone connections using corDECT in rural areas—indeed, an achievement for TeNet.

But Dr Jhunjhunwala says that these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. His vision and dream is 200 million telephone lines by 2008. Achieving that dream calls for massive propagation of the technology in rural areas. Yet again, TeNet came with a brilliant idea—it incubated a company called n-Logue Communications. The charter of the company was to provide telecom and Internet connectivity only to the rural areas of the country. Drawing inspiration from the country’s STD booths and the cable revolution, n-Logue pioneered the concept of Internet kiosks offering telephone and a range of Net services using corDECT. Successful implementation of corDECT on the Internet kiosks can now be seen in remote villages like Dhar and Sikar districts in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Today corDECT has come a long way. It has changed the lifestyle of the village folk. They are no longer a deprived lot—access to telephone and the Internet has opened up new opportunities for them and exposed them to the outside world. The Indian government recognized Dr Jhunjhunwala’s pioneering efforts and conferred the prestigious Padma Shri award on him. But Jhunjhunwala hasn’t rested on his laurels.

Jhunjhunwala has been not just a technology visionary, he also had the pulse of the market, which is why corDECT didn’t have to go through endless pilots akin to research initiatives. Today, after two decades of teaching and researching at IIT Madras, Dr Jhunjhunwala has packed a career only few can muster.

Today, one of Jhunjhunwala’s incubation companies, Midas Communications is at the threshold of becoming a Rs 250-crore company with its cash register ringing with orders from across the world. Says Shirish Purohit, director, Midas Technologies, "We owe it all to Dr Jhunjhunwala. Right from my student days at IIT Madras, he was an inspiration to me. He was very determined to indigenize technologies. It is not surprising that his out-of-the-box thinking has brought in a radical change in the Indian telecom industry."

SHRIKANTH G In Chennai

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