Project led by IIT-B Professor Reaches Finals of International Competition
Professor Abhay Karandikar of IIT-Bombay, started a project on optimizing the cost of internet and providing the service to the rural population of India.
Professor Abhay Karandikar of IIT-Bombay, started a project on optimizing the cost of internet and providing the service to the rural population of India. His project has made it to the finals of the 'Equal Rating Innovation Challenge’ started by Mozilla, the non-profit organisation that came up with open source browser Firefox.
The competition was started by Mozilla in October 2016 and received 98 submissions from across 27 countries. Professor Abhay’s initiative is one of the five projects that have made it to the finals of the global challenge.
Also Read:Krishna University Joins Hands with IIT Bombay to provide Spoken Tutorial Courses
Professor Abhay and his team of 5 will compete in the finals of the competition that is scheduled for March 29, 2017. Along with his team, he has developed an open source low-cost prototype that will provide reasonable broadband for Internet access in rural societies of India. This scheme will use Television White Space Spectrum for providing services. The project is called Indian Gram Marg Solution.
Professor Abhay’s teaches for the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay. His team consists of two full-time project engineers and three students who are assisting him. The team has been working for the last three years to come up with the right logistics for the project and make it live.
Following are the other projects that have made it to the finals of the challenge:
| Name of the Project | Country |
| Free Networks P2P Cooperative | Brazil |
| Freemium Mobile Internet (FMI) | Canada |
| Zenzeleni 'Do it for yourselves' Networks (ZN) | South Africa |
| Afri-Fi: Free Public Wi-Fi | South Africa |
Also Read:Super 30’s Founder Anand Kumar Interacts with Students of IIT Kharagpur
The competition has been organized to come up with scalable methods to spread digital literacy. The idea is to bring together designers, entrepreneurs, researchers and creatives from all over the world for digital progress. The winners of the challenge will be awarded 250,000 USD in order to implement these projects on ground.