Profile | May 2008

______________________________________________________________________________

Sam Pitroda: the Father of India's Telecom Revolution
Read excerpts from the 1992 biography

Globalom Media 

“The name, Sam Pitroda, can be better explained by the yellow phone booths all across India. Yes, it was mainly because of the efforts of this inventor, technocrat, and social thinker that telecom revolution started in India,” reads a brief introduction in the AVENUES 07 – Annual International Festival – at IIT Mumbai.

An inventor, a technocrat, and a social thinker, Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda, better known as Sam Pitroda is a genuine visionary.

Born in Titlagarh, Orissa, India, Sam Pitroda did his schooling at Anand Vallabh Vidyalaya in Gujarat and Masters in Physics and Electronics in Baroda. 

In 1964, Sam Pitroda went to the US and did his Masters in Electrical Engineering in Chicago. He got a job, in 1966, in GTE, Chicago, which focussed on digital communications.

In 1974, he left GTE and started his own company called Wescom Switching in Chicago, which was sold to Rockwell International six years later. At Rockwell, he was head of telecom and stayed for three years.

In 1981, Sam returned to India and founded the Center for Development of Telematics in 1984.

In 1987, he was asked by the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to help "democratise" access to telecom services across the nation's vast population -- at a time when less than 1% of India's population had access to a telephone.

Sam initiated India's telecom revolution which, in turn, was the catalyst for the country's IT revolution. He did this by pioneering the idea of "share phone booths", which are instantly recognisable yellow kiosks that are now available in almost every Indian city, town and village. 

The key breakthrough was the realisation that access, rather than density, was crucial and therefore it was better to aim for a phone in every community rather than one in every home.

By introducing small, rural exchanges to India, he brought the telephone to some of the world's most previously isolated region. He also made the case that accessibility, not density, should be the focus of the implementation of telecom. By providing public access the bright yellow STD PCO boxes that you encounter in India are a manifestation of his efforts.  He revolutionized the state of telecommunications in India and is widely considered to be responsible for India's information, computing and communications revolution. He provided a model for other developing nations.

In 1989 he was elected first chairman of India’s Telecom Commission, where he was responsible for all aspects of national and international Telecom and over 500 000 employees.

After his stint in India, in 1995, Sam went back to the US and founded WorldTel—a global organization backed by the ITU—to help develop telecom infrastructure in less developed countries, as CEO and subsequently as Chairman.

In 2005, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, appointed Sam as Chairman of the newly-constituted National Knowledge Commission, with a mandate to "sharpen India's knowledge edge" by improving intellectual property protection and promoting knowledge applications in agriculture and industry.

Sam Pitroda's reputation as an internationally respected telecom inventor, management guru, entrepreneur and policymaker has been built over the past 38 years in the telecom and IT industries the world over. He has been responsible for starting many technology companies and His experience straddles corporate, technological, management and sociological worlds. 

The well- known virtue of Sam Pitroda is that he has a definite vision to use technology for the benefit and betterment of society. Along with being a pioneer in telecoms, Sam Pitroda has made a strong case for food, clean water, and adequate shelter for the under-privileged section of society. Through his efforts, Sam has brought telephones to some of the world's previously isolated regions, emphasising accessibility rather than density. By providing public access to telephones, Sam Pitroda has revolutionized the state of telecommunications access in India

Sam Pitroda is also the founding Chairman of a non-profit Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions in India. As a result of his pioneering works, Sam Pitroda holds more than 50 patents and has lectured extensively on Telecoms, Technology and Development, in almost all parts of the world. 

Sam is also a founding member of the World Telecommunications Advisory Council of the ITU in Geneva. He is also adviser to Kofi Annan on the ICT Advisory Committee. He is the recipient of India’s National Citizen’s Award for work on telecom from the Prime Minister of India. In 1993, he was awarded the IIT Alumni Medal, and in 1995 the International Distinguished Leadership Awar

It is for connecting India and helping provide phone access to a billion people, and building a foundation for a wired India’s future as an information industry powerhouse, Dataquest has presented the IT Lifetime Achievement Award for 2002 to Sam Pitroda. He was awarded the 2006 Innovation Award for Business Process in November in London by The Economist for his achievements as a telecommunications inventor, entrepreneur and policymaker.

On April 18 this year, in Toronto, at the first Gala Award night, hosted by Canada-India Foundation (CIF), the former President of India, Dr Abdul Kalam, known as “the People’s President” and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, presented the CIF Chanchlani Global Indian Award to Sam for pioneering the telecom revolution in India in the 1980s.