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TeNet is taking telephone and Internet connectivity to tiny villages across India.
Young college students were politically and intellectually active all across Indian campuses in the 1970s, but perhaps nowhere more so than at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur. The razor-sharp young minds gathered there were keen to use their
technological training for the benefit of India at large, and the rural agricultural and artisanal communities in particular, who appeared to be furthest removed from the onward march of technology. One result of this questioning was the Patriotic People for Science and Technology group (PPST) which is still active today, organising projects and programmes for indigenous techno-social groups. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, an electronics engineering student, was one early member of this group. Along with many other gifted IIT graduates, he left for the United States for advanced work. But unlike most of his contemporaries who now run major technology corporations and start-ups in the US, he consciously chose to return to India to work at the IIT-Madras, with the objective of finding
ways to make technology work for this society. As head of Electronics Engineering and the Telephone and Networking (TeNet) Group at IIT-Madras (now Chennai), he has incubated no less than seven companies, running up and down the value
chain of wireless telephony and communications. TeNet's latest baby, n-Logue Communications Private Limited, now promises to provide Internet
and telephone services to every village in every district it enters. n-Logue is beginning to provide wireless connectivity in parts of Tamil
Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. When the Internet revolution comes to small villages all across India, it will be on account of his pi!
oneering efforts. Find out more about the TeNet group from their website:
http://tenet.res.in
Contact: The Telecommunication and Computer Networks Group
IIT Madras, Chennai 600 036, India
Email:
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