Expert View

June 30, 2005
Midas wins national award for low-cost devices, networks

NEW DELHI -- India's villages can now look forward to drawing money from ATMs and videoconferencing with doctors and experts in fields of agriculture, etc. with the help of low-cost devices and telecom networks with broadband connectivity of 256kbps. Banyan Networks, the broadband division of Midas Communication Technologies, which makes low-cost broadband networks for such devices, recently won the national award from the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi. The Rs. 5 lakh award is for successful commercialisation of indigenous technology. The award was conferred jointly to Banyan Networks and IIT, Chennai.

Convergence Plus interviewed Air Commodore (Retd.), S.S.Motial, executive director, Midas, on the innovations of the TeNet group based in IIT, Chennai and headed by Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the inventor of the CorDECT WLL product for rural connectivity. Midas also won a number of other awards including CSIR Diamond Jubilee Technology award 2004 presented by the Prime Minister of India. The bag of awards includes the Excellence in Electronics award 2002-03 given by Ministry of Information Technology and ELCINA for outstanding R&D work, the ESC award for excellence in exports and the MAIT award for exports innovation.

Air. Cmdr. Motial, who was previously CMD of ITI, has had a distinguished career in the armed forces and followed it up with the revival and turn round of ITI, the largest telecom manufacturing company in the country. Midas, floated by TeNeT group, is incubating several technology companies in the laboratories of the IIT, Chennai. TeNeT group consists of IIT professors who have teamed up to innovate low-cost products for rural applications.

Midas is a technology development company working in the convergent areas of telecom and computer networking. The IIT alumni that established the company in 1994 bring significant entrepreneurial expertise, industrial engineering skills and technical know-how keeping in view the Indian context as well as the global market. Midas has over a 500-member R&D team to create what have become path-breaking products, as we discover during this interview.

Convergence Plus: Midas Communications recently received the national award. What were the developments made by Midas?

S.S.Motial: Midas is part of the TeNeT group. This group consists of 20 professors from IIT. The other company of the group is Banyan. Banyan was focused on broadband solutions on fiber and copper. It developed the first copper-based broadband called DIAS, which is suited to meet Indian conditions in which the copper is very thin and has many joints. Later, it developed ADSL, ADSL2 Plus, DLC narrowband, DLC broadband routers and switches. Thereafter Banyan merged with Midas. We now call it the Banyan network broadband group of Midas. This Group got the award for developing the broadband products with the TeNet group of IIT.

CP: The objective of Midas is to develop products for rural areas, which is in line with your drive to develop low cost products. Which products have been developed thus far?

SSM: Midas was the first company to come out with a fixed wireless solution for rural areas. We could deliver 35Kbps or 70Kbps of data to villages. This product is called DIU because it is a DECT-based product. By setting up a small telephone exchange, we can cover 400-500 villages through wireless communication and this becomes a cost-effective solution. There is no other product that can give this kind of solution to such a large population in one go. The best part is that our infrastructure cost is very low. The operators can start operations with very low loading and keep on going as they get more revenue or find demand rising.

The upfront investment becomes very low and, therefore the capex required is minimal and that is exactly what we deliver. Because of this transportation medium available, we provided a kiosk in the villages through another company of TeNet group, n-logue. This kiosk is entrusted to an entrepreneur in the village.

CP: How does this work at the ground level? What other services do you provide?

SSM: We select an entrepreneur and give him a full-fledged kiosk that has a multi-media computer, digital camera, photographic-quality printer, all with power backup and lots of software. Much of this is application software, which helps the villager carry out videoconferencing. In fact, in the last Geneva conference organised by the ITU, a village from India was connected to Geneva. That is one of the achievements we have already accomplished.

Because of this application, we have tied-up with doctors and agricultural specialists at the district level. The doctors come online and hold videoconference sessions with the villagers. As a result, the villagers get online consultancy from specialists. Over and above, they can download forms, fill them up submit them online. This entrepreneur can also become the photographer for the village, and create a database or make identity cards. We also provide him with a horoscope-software and he becomes the pandit of the family. These services enable him to earn revenue of Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 3,000 within six months. This is a success story.

CP: How do you provide these services on low bandwidth? According to the recent Broadband Policy, the minimum speed rate should be 256Kbps to transfer data. Will you upgrade your product to work at this speed?

SSM: Our product will be able to deliver mobile WLL/fixed WLL services, and will also deliver data at 256Kbps. Apart from this, we will deliver a Scheduler by which the service provider can schedule the way he wants to provide the services and also make the data rate flexible to suit the customer needs. We will also provide a full display telephone, which will be a sort of a miniature computer and provide Internet access as well. This will allow the user to do limited surfing online, as well as send an SMS, use caller ID, get information on the railways, weather, etc.

CP: Do you consider this whole thing is a part of the change that is coming up? Are you looking at it in a national perspective beyond commercial value?

SSM: According to the recent statement made by the ICT Minister Dayanidhi Maran, by providing one telephone, we can increase the GDP of a village by 1.5 percent. We also believe if sufficient connectivity is provided in a village, we can improve the per capita income in the village. If e-governance is put in place, we will find applications with many folds. The villagers can get information about markets, products and the best price available for their products.

CP: BSNL will soon have 10 million lines. As and when the Broadband Policy gets implemented, do you think your products will be used by BSNL?

SSM: Our product, which can transmit data at 256Kbps, will definitely cover the wireless requirement of broadband in areas not accessible by wire or fiber. I am sure these products will be used in urban and rural areas. We expect good demand for our products in India as well as abroad. After acquisition of Banyan, Midas has become a total solution company on access networks. We have already come out with a product called OMSEN, which is a broadband DLC. There are very few companies all over the world, which are into ADSL2 plus domain.

CP: Why can't 55 million cable connections in India be exploited for data?

SSM: The fundamental flaw is that cable allows one-way traffic in India. Because of amplifiers and splitters, it cannot be made into two-way. We have come out with a new solution, and have already deployed it in two networks. We will use cable for downlinking and CorDECT will be used for uplinking. It is a cost-effective solution. It is a win-win situation. If you want to carry out video streaming, the data rate required should be in MBs for downlinking and in Kbps for uplinking.

CP: Do you have any tie-ups with operators?

SSM: We are yet to tie-up with telecom service providers and universal service operators. We are also trying to tie-up with cable operators and ISPs. With this, a telecom service provider becomes a cable operator and vis-à-vis an ISP becomes a telecom service provider.

CP: With the new products available at low-cost in rural areas, do you think India will soon be a broadband country?

SSM: The fiber growth in the country has been enormous. We have got fiber laid by BSNL, Bharti, Reliance, Tata and RailTel. Villages are so near the access points that they can easily be connected by broadband. Once a village has broadband connectivity, using TeNET's medical kit, the entrepreneur in the village can monitor pulse rate, ECG, temperature, heartbeat of the patient, etc. It will be sent to the doctor in real-time on the network. The doctor can give his prognosis without having to come to the village.

We are also trying to integrate a micro-base station of GSM with our network in a village, which will provide the villagers with full GSM mobility. The idea is to give them low-cost delivery. We are planning to do everything locally. We will launch this product in the near future.