Finally, some recognition for WiMax in India

As India lunges forward full throttle towards WiMax technology, there could be no better fitting tribute to the country's remarkable progress in the last few months, but to honour the pioneers of the technologies.

Keeping that in mind, Republic Day saw Arogyaswami Paulraj receiving the Padma Bhushan.

Paulraj, a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, co-founded Beceem Communications, Inc - now the leading supplier of mobile WiMax chip sets worldwide - in 2004, to develop base band and RF chips sets for WiMax 802.16e standard. His work on Mimo - the technology for using multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver, earned him the title of “father of WiMax”. His other achievements include 320 research papers, including a new one on space-time communications theory, besides the thirty US patents he holds for wireless technology.

India has been delaying the spectrum auction for BWA spectrum. WiMax broadband will not become a reality to many people till private operators start using WiMax technology.

The ICT veteran was Deepak Puri, CD-DVD pioneer and alumunus of St Stephen's College, Delhi and Imperial College, London, to receive Padma award. He steered Moser Baer since it was founded 20 years ago, to see it grow into the world's second largest manufacturer of optical media with a presence in over 80 countries and plants in India and Germany, the former where it has become a household name in entertainment.

K P P Nambiar, founder of Tata Electronic Research and Development Labs, was also awarded the Padma Shri. Former employee of Texas Instruments, USA, Nambiar was offered the responsibility of nurturing India's first state government-owned public electronics enterprise, Keltron in 1973. The highlights of his time at Keltron include the setting up of 50 women's co-operatives in rural areas that produced most of the consumer products sold by Keltron, and developing the company's R&D centre. He also served as secretary of the Department of Electronics from 1986-1989. Currently chairman of IIM, Kozhikode, IITM, Kerala, and Namtech Group, Bangalore, Nambiar was honoured with the Republic Day Award in 1973, by CSIR, National Design Award in 1985 by the Institution of Engineers and was named Electronics Man of the Year in 1995 by ELCINA.

Last, but in no way the least, another Padma winner was Nandan Nilekani, IIT-Mumbai alumni, and head of UID Authority of India (UIDAI). Co-founder of NASSCOM, Nilekani was named one of 'Asia's Power 25 - the most powerful people in business in Asia' by Fortune magazine in 2004. The Padma award is the most coveted feather in his cap, a close second being the listing of Infosys on the Nasdaq in 1999.

Beryl M

berylm@cybermedia.co.in