Seamless telecommunications has been both a cause and an effect
of what Tom Friedman calls the flattening of the world. In the flat world,
geographical boundaries are irrelevant; political boundaries are meaningless.
We Indians, surprising as it may sound, have been very
comfortable with this idea for long. India itself has been a political country
for just about a few hundred years, from the time the British ruled it as a
single nation; before that it was a collection of small little kingdoms. But
even then, citizes of these kingdoms had no doubts whatsoever that they belonged
to Bharat. What was Bharat? It was an idea.
India has always been an idea first. When we started
conceptualizing the 150th issue, we did not want to dilute our Indianness of
which we are so proud; but we never wanted to confine that Indiannness it to a
set of boundaries. So we decided to focus on people-people who have made
contributions to telecom not just within the political boundaries of India but
anywhere in the world. For Indians, Vasudha (the earth) is, anyway, one kutumb
(family).
These personalities belong to various sections of the industry,
society, and government. They range from technologists to bureaucrats to
politicians.
Together, they will tell you a story of telecom-some of it unveiling in New
Delhi; some in New Jersey; some in Bangalore; and some in Boston. Happy Reading!
Ajai
Chowdhry
Heralded the computer culture in India
AK
Sinha
Launched BSNL's broadband service
Anil
D Ambani
Led RCoVL's march to the market
APJ
Abdul Kalam
Advocate of rural connectivity
Arun
Netravali, (NRI)
Pioneered video compression
technology
Arun
Sarin
The face of Vodafone
Arun
Sobti
Innovated with 3G and broadband
Arvind
Virmani
Pushed for de-licensing in telecom
sector
Ashraf
M Dahod
Pioneer of mobile wireless
infrastructure
Asim
Ghosh
A strategic planner
Atal
Behari Vajpayee
Presided over watershed years of
Indian telecom
AV
Gokak
Freeing tariff barriers
BA
Majmudar
Established CDMA in India
Babu
Mandava
Creator of SIMD/VLIW DSP processors
BD
Khurana
The brain behind Reliance's
telecom venture
Beni
Prasad Verma
Wiring rural India
Bharat
T Doshi
Sustained contributions to networking
technologies
Bimal
Jalan
Paved the way for private ISPs in
India
BK
Zutshi
Fought for QoS
BV
Jagadeesh
Hosting hero
BV
Naidu
Started India's first email
network
C
Sivasankaran
India's first DSL
ISP
Chandrababu
Naidu
Used communications for governance
Dayakar
Puskoor
Wireless warrior
Dayanidhi
Maran
Made India a telecom manufacturing
hub
Debasis
Mitra
Networking Guru
Dev
Gupta
Transforming cable
TV networks
Devendra
Kumar Sangal
Modernized India's switching
network
Dr
Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj
The father of MIMO Smart Antennas
Dr
DPS Seth
Pioneered the concept of unified
licensing
Dr
Govind P Agrawal
Fiber-optics Guru
Dr
Gururaj Deshpande
Influential technology
entrepreneur and visionary
Dr
Hemant Kanakia
Designed packet and cell switching
architectures
Dr
Inderpal Singh Mumick
The billing specialist
Dr
Narinder Singh Kapany
Invented fiber optics
Dr
Pradeep Sindhu
Challenged Cisco's monopoly
Dr
Rakesh Mohan
Championing telecom reforms in India
Dr
Srinidhi Varadarajan
Architect of System X, a supercomputer
Dr
Srinivasan Ramani
Ushered the Internet age in India
Dr
TH Choudhury
Founding chairman of VSNL
Dr
Vijay Bhatkar
Father of India's first supercomputer – PARAM
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