Given how integral the Internet has grow to be to on a regular basis duties akin to buying, paying payments, and holding digital conferences, it’s attention-grabbing that almost 30 p.c of the worldwide inhabitants nonetheless has no entry to it. Greater than 2 billion persons are nonetheless offline, in response to a report launched in November by the International Telecommunication Union.
Increasingly more persons are being linked, although, due to IEEE Future Networks’ Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) and related packages. Since 2021, the technical neighborhood has been working to speed up the event, standardization, and deployment of 5G, 6G, and future generations.
Yearly, CTU holds a worldwide competitors to hunt out innovators who’re within the early phases of growing applied sciences or purposes to supply higher entry. It additionally holds an annual summit that brings collectively consultants, neighborhood leaders, and different events to debate methods to develop entry and foster digital inclusion.
CTU expanded in a number of methods final yr. It launched regional summits to give attention to native connectivity points, organized community-focused occasions, and established an expanded mentorship program to additional help contest winners and the subsequent era of technological innovators impacting humanity. This system additionally companions with the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) to develop tips for a few of the submitted improvements.
“IEEE Future Networks has created a neighborhood to deliver all these initiatives engaged on digital connectivity collectively in a single platform and leverage the IEEE model to assist elevate the visibility of their work,” says IEEE Life Fellow Sudhir Dixit, a CTU cochair and a Basic Internet Foundation cofounder, which additionally works to develop Internet access.
A contest for brand new connectivity strategies
The CTU problem, launched in 2021, usually receives 200 to 300 submissions annually, Dixit says. Final yr 245 tasks from 52 international locations have been submitted. Members embrace teachers, nonprofit organizations, startups, and college students.
Initiatives could be entered into considered one of three classes. The Know-how Purposes class is for brand new connectivity strategies or improvements that broaden broadband access. Those that enhance the affordability of Web companies can enter the Enterprise Mannequin class. The Neighborhood Enablement class is for methods that promote public broadband adoption.
After deciding on a class, entrants select between two tracks based mostly on their venture’s maturity. The proof-of-concept route is for early-stage however useful expertise that has already produced outcomes. The conceptual path is for tasks within the theoretical section that haven’t undergone full testing.
“IEEE Future Networks has created a neighborhood to deliver all these initiatives engaged on digital connectivity collectively in a single platform and leverage the IEEE model to assist elevate the visibility of their work.” —Sudhir Dixit, Connecting the Unconnected cochair
Final yr’s problem submission interval was from March to June, with judging phases from June via November. The 20 winners introduced their options in December at a digital Winners Summit. Fourteen tasks obtained prize cash, starting from US $500 to $2,500. Six finalists earned an honorable point out on the summit.
The awards quantities have various over time, based mostly on the sponsorship.
Among the many winners have been a solar-powered community broadband network in Tanzania, a low-cost methodology for accessing the Web that uses FM radio and a short message service (SMS), and a strategy for utilizing India’s rural broadband infrastructure to ship medical companies to folks residing in remoted, tribal, and different underserved areas.
“Our job is to assist additional develop the expertise, search for gaps, and see whether it is adequate to be utilized to rural villages, like these in Africa and India,” says IEEE Fellow Ashutosh Dutta, who’s a CTU cochair and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. “The concept behind the competition is to verify the expertise truly will get carried out on the grassroots degree and is being utilized by the area people.”
This yr’s problem submission interval runs till 19 June, with judging phases from July via October.
The finalists of the 2025 IEEE Join the Unconnected problem describe their tasks.IEEE Future Networks
Native connectivity discussions
The CTU program hosted three regional summits final yr. The North American event was held in September in Washington, D.C. In November, the Global/Asia-Pacific meeting befell in Bangalore, India; it was co-located with the IEEE Future Networks World Forum. The Europe, Middle East, and Africa summit additionally was held in November, in Abuja, Nigeria.
Matters mentioned on the summits included infrastructure options for common connectivity; sustainable enterprise fashions; scaling homegrown applied sciences; and coverage, regulation, and financing points.
As of press time, the dates for this yr’s regional summits had not been introduced.
Neighborhood-focused occasions
To assist bridge the hole between concepts and their deployment, the Connect a Community event was established to show how some new applied sciences may profit folks. The inaugural occasion was held in November in Bengaluru, India. Through the daylong program, 10 of the problem winners demonstrated their connectivity options to villagers from seven rural communities.
Dutta credit IEEE Life Fellow Rakesh Kumar with devising the occasion. Kumar chairs IEEE Future Directions, which was the place Future Networks acquired its begin in 2017 because the 5G Initiative.
“Kumar needs to make sure the successful applied sciences are going to be helpful for the neighborhood,” Dutta says.
Offering entrepreneurs with enterprise abilities
Dixit says the Future Networks staff believed that merely conducting a contest and distributing prizes wasn’t sufficient.
“We needed to observe up with the winners, monitor their progress, and assist them flip their concepts right into a enterprise,” he says.
To perform that, IEEE launched the Empowerment Through Mentorship program, by which budding entrepreneurs are paired with business leaders and skilled mentors who present them with 1,000 days of steerage, teaching them on scaling up their enterprise.
“We launched the mentorship program to additional the trigger,” Dixit says. “These folks could also be good at growing expertise, however they don’t know the advertising and marketing challenges, the right way to elevate cash, and different elements.”
The Lemelson Foundation, a corporation in Portland, Ore., that companions with IEEE, collaborated on the mentorship program. The muse’s philanthropic technique is to domesticate a strong ecosystem for entrepreneurs in East Africa, India, and the United States. It does so by offering the entrepreneurs with instruments together with financing choices and entry to communities that share their ardour.
The muse selected to accomplice with IEEE “due to its highly effective worldwide community and give attention to electrical engineering, which is a crucial factor of communications and power infrastructure globally,” says Kory Murphy, Lemelson’s program officer for U.S. invention and entrepreneurship.
“Different elements embrace IEEE’s give attention to nontraditional or deprived areas in India,” Murphy says, “and its recognition that mentorship is crucial for the profitable deployment of recent applied sciences.”
IEEE started an early pilot venture in 2023 with help of a grant from the Lemelson Basis, to find out if a sustained entrepreneurship mentorship program was priceless and crucial, he says. It then carried out a survey via 2024 to gather info to raised perceive the wants of stakeholders, mentors, and entrepreneurs in hard-to-reach areas in India. Whereas the early pilot program was restricted to that nation, its intent was to be taught from the expertise and share the findings globally, he says.
“Our job is to assist additional develop the expertise, search for gaps, and see whether it is adequate to be utilized to rural villages, like these in Africa and India.” —Ashutosh Dutta, Connecting the Unconnected cochair
“The muse’s involvement was geared toward testing sure actions, partnership methods, and understanding the budgetary necessities for a prepilot program,” he says. “The first objective of the muse is to allow circumstances for innovation to happen inside regional techniques, particularly addressing the chance for sustained, systematic, and relational mentorship in expertise innovation.”
The Empowerment By way of Mentorship program is structured into three tiers. One focuses on people and their wants, this system/technical degree focuses on the invention, and the enterprise degree guides individuals from the preliminary idea via product testing and validation. Inside every observe, individuals interact in actions akin to networking, securing monetary help, and pitching their improvements, Murphy says.
“The 1,000-day method displays the idea that it requires a protracted time period to educate and help those that historically are excluded,” he says.
CTU mentors could be IEEE members or nonmembers who’re profitable entrepreneurs and personal small or massive corporations, Dixit says. In addition they can work in academia.
“They should be obsessed with coaching and mentoring different folks,” Dixit says. “We now have created a curriculum that covers matters akin to methods to get financing from buyers and the right way to flip concepts right into a worthwhile enterprise. It’s not the expertise that may make the product profitable; it’s the whole lot else that goes into it.”
To find out whether or not any of the problem’s submitted tasks have the potential to grow to be a typical, the CTU working group collaborates with the IEEE SA Industry Connections program’s 6G Rural Connectivity and Intelligent Village activity. Initiatives thought-about for requirements should not have to be winners. Any venture that has efficiently handed the primary section, accomplished the second-phase necessities, and requested a evaluation could also be thought-about.
Usually, about half of the submitted tasks are reviewed for attainable normal implications, Dutta says.
“We chosen about 60 submissions that could possibly be probably standardized,” he says. “Out of these, we work with IEEE SA’s fast reactive requirements exercise group to slim them down to 5 or 10 that may be probably standardized.
“The CTU program shouldn’t be solely about growing a expertise or implementing it, but in addition standardizing it so that individuals world wide can use the usual.”
One such venture led to the event of IEEE P1962, “Standard for Providing Broadband Connectivity to Rural Infrastructure by Utilizing Solar Panels as Optical Communication Receivers.” It specifies an structure for an optical receiver that makes use of solar panels and related circuitry to supply energy-efficient, reasonably priced, and high-speed optical wireless communication.
“CTU has created a platform for the world to deliver their concepts to at least one single place the place folks can discuss to one another about them,” Dixit says. “We’re a unifying pressure.
We deliver these many dimensions collectively to attach the unconnected.”
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