VNL's wins The Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Awards

NEW DELHI: Green telecom solutions provider VNL's solar-powered base station for cellphone networks has brought accolades to the Indian company that has been selected as the Bronze winner at the The Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Awards. The awards have been instituted to recognize groundbreaking innovations whose application would be particularly useful in a time of economic hardship. Other winners for this year include: a tool to identify new disease strains and an artificial hand.

VNL's solar-powered base station that can be used to bring cellphone services to remote villages, is the only innovation from an Indian company to features in the list of the winners. VNL also emerged as the winner of the Wireless category.

The base stations struck a cord with the jury as mobile-phone service can deliver huge benefits to developing countries but getting cellphone coverage to remote, especially rural parts of India and other countries, is hindered by high installation and operating costs. Also, the specialized knowledge needed to set up and run a cellular station, is not widely available. As a result, few operators have gone into these communities, according to the WSJ website.

Founded by Rajiv Mehrotra, VNL is looking to overcome this obstacle with a low-power cellular base station that requires little capital expense and has almost no operating costs. The base stations can be powered by a small solar panel in daylight; batteries provide backup power for up to 72 hours.

Another challenge was making the device so simple that it can be installed at low cost by villagers.
The solution has been inspired by the Scandinavian retailer Ikea: The entire base station comes delivered in six boxes, small enough to all fit in an ox cart. Simple illustrated instructions show how to put the pieces together using color-coded cables.

Even turning the station to the right microwave signal is easy���it emits a continuous beeping sound when the signal is strongest. The technology may not be much of a technical breakthrough, but "it's worthy because of what it might bring to developing countries," says William Webb, head of research and development at Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, and one of the Innovation Awards judges.

The winners of The Wall Street Journal's 2009 Technology Innovation Awards will be honored Oct. 13 at a ceremony and dinner in Redwood City, Calif. Featuring a keynote address by Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive of Salesforce.com Inc., the ceremony will be held in conjunction with the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase.

The VentureWire Technology Showcase will spotlight 75 of the industry's most innovative companies, and will feature keynote presentations by Bruce Aust, executive vice president of the corporate client group at Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.; Guido Jouret, chief technology officer of the emerging-technologies group at Cisco Systems Inc.; Mary McDowell, executive vice president and chief development officer, Nokia Corp., and Walter Mossberg, Wall Street Journal personal-technology columnist.