In the late eighties, Professor Jhunjhunwala and his colleagues at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras formed the TeNeT Group (Telecommunications and Computer Networks) with a vision to develop low cost technologies to enable telecom growth in India.
The Group had by this time studied the telecom system in India in some detail: The capital expenses (CAPEX) on installing a telephone line in 1994 were around Rs. 40,000. An operator needed average revenue per user (ARPU) of over Rs.1000 per month to break even. The household incomes of urban and rural areas were such that hardly 3-4% of the households could afford to pay this amount. It was little wonder that the number of telephones in India had stagnated at only about 7 million for a country whose population in 1993 stood at 850 million.
Against this background, the TeNeT Group put forth its vision of Achieving 100 million telephone lines in India within a decade. The Group recognized that providing such connectivity could transform the lives of people across the country and would be a significant step toward empowerment and economic development.
In order to realize the objective of making telephony affordable to the masses, the Group decided to focus on ways to reduce the CAPEX and OPEX through innovation, so that the ARPU required would come down. The local loop, which is the copper cable that connects the exchange to the homes, forms the major share of the CAPEX. The TeNeT Group realized therefore, that the Wireless in Local Loop (WiLL) technology, which would replace the copper wire, would be the ideal solution to drive down costs. The cost of electronics, governed by Moore.s law, decreases with increasing volumes. Therefore the WiLL would bring down the CAPEX significantly and enable India to reach its target of 100 million telephones.
Dr. Jhunjhunwala and his Group developed corDECT, an advanced, field proven, Wireless Access System along with Midas Communication Technologies, a company incubated by them at IIT Madras. It was not only the lowest cost wireless system in the late nineties, its exchange and base station could work at 55 *C and required less than 10% of power as compared to other technologies prevalent at the time. corDECT provides complete wireless access solution for new and expanding telecommunication networks with seamless integration of both voice and Internet services.
Dr. Jhunjhunwala helped start up the company Banyan Networks which focused on data over copper (DSL) Technology and developed a number of networking products especially suited to the uneven quality copper deployed in Indian local loop.In the early part of this decade, Dr. Jhunjhunwala also helped start up another company called Tejas Networks in India which developed a family of software-differentiated, next-generation SDH/SONET products that enable telecom carriers to cost-effectively build converged networks that support both voice as well as new data services. Tejas' TJ100 multiplexors and cross-connects address the problem of efficiently aggregating/distributing bandwidth to the access/edge of the network and also enable telecom operators to build intelligent networks that can be easily managed. In a short period since its inception in May 2000, Tejas has established itself amongst the top SDH vendor in the highly competitive Indian market, and has spread its reach globally to over 100 countries through strategic OEM partnerships with leading global equipment vendors.
Convinced that Telecom in India would grow only when new operators are able to use technology to compete with the incumbents, Dr. Jhunjhunwala was advisor or board member to almost all Telecom operators in India. His primary role has been technology and business strategy and has helped India to become the fasters growing telecom market in the world.
In order that the telecom infrastructure has a wider reach in the country, Dr. Jhunjhunwala has been able to influence India.s telecom policies. He has also enabled the development of a telecom operator.s network in India and continues to work closely with Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Information Technology, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) towards these goals. He was a committee member for the working group on .IT for Masses. set up by Ministry of Information Technology and was earlier a member of various task forces contributing to Vision 2020 document.
Recognizing that policy and regulations are key to telecom growth, Dr. Jhunjhunwala leads a pan-Asia effort today known as Communications Policy Research (CPR) South. The objective is to create a forum of academia, policy makers and research scholars in the Asia Pacific region to examine ICT policy and regulations that affect the region.