Given how important the Internet is to everyday activities such as shopping, paying bills, and holding virtual meetings, it is interesting that nearly 30 percent of the world’s population still does not have access to it. More than 2 billion people are still offline, according to a report released in November by the International Telecommunication Union.
More people are connected, however, thanks to IEEE Future Networks’ Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) and similar initiatives. Since 2021, the technology community has been working to accelerate the development, standardization, and deployment of 5G, 6G, and future generations.
Every year, CTU holds a global competition to seek early-stage innovators to develop technologies or applications to provide greater access. It also holds an annual conference that brings together experts, community leaders, and other stakeholders to discuss strategies to increase access and promote digital inclusion.
CTU has expanded in many ways over the past year. It launched regional conferences to focus on local communication issues, organized community-focused events, and established an expanded mentoring program to continue to support competition winners and the next generation of technology innovators impacting humanity. The program is also working with the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) to develop guidelines for some of the new features included.
“IEEE Future Networks has created a community to bring together all these programs working on digital connectivity in one place and use the IEEE brand to help raise the visibility of their work,” said IEEE Life Fellow Sudhir Dixit, chairman of CTU and founder of the Basic Internet Foundation, which also works to increase access to the Internet.
A competition for new ways to connect
The CTU Challenge, launched in 2021, typically receives 200 to 300 submissions each year, Dixit said. Last year 245 projects from 52 countries were submitted. Participants include academics, non-profit organizations, startups, and students.
Projects can be entered into one of three categories. The Technology Applications category is for new ways of connecting or new things that extend broadband access. Those who improve the accessibility of online services can enter the Business Model category. The Public Acceptance section is about strategies that promote public broadband adoption.
After choosing a category, entrants choose between two tracks based on the maturity of their project. The proof-of-concept route is a modern but effective technology that is already producing results. The conceptual approach is for projects in the theoretical stage that have not been fully tested.
“IEEE Future Networks has created a community that will bring together all these programs working on digital connectivity in one place and use the IEEE brand to help increase the visibility of their work.” -Sudhir Dixit, Connecting the Unconnected cochair
Last year’s challenge submission period was from March to June, with judging stages from June to November. The 20 finalists presented their solutions in December at a virtual Winners Summit. Fourteen projects received prize money, ranging from US $500 to $2,500. Six finalists received honorable mention at the conference.
Award amounts have varied over the years, based on funding.
Among the winners were a solar-powered public network in Tanzania, a low-cost method of accessing the Internet using FM radio and short message service (SMS), and a strategy to use India’s rural broadband infrastructure to bring medical services to people living in isolated, tribal, and other underserved areas.
“Our job is to help develop technology, look for gaps, and see if they are suitable for use in rural areas, such as those in Africa and India,” said IEEE Fellow Ashutosh Dutta, chairman of CTU and professor at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “The idea of the competition is to ensure that the technology is used at the grassroots level and used by the local community.”
The submission period for this year’s challenge continues until June 19, with judging stages from July to October.
Winners of the 2025 IEEE Connect the Unconnected challenge describe their projects.IEEE Future Networks
Local communication chats
The CTU program held three regional conferences last year. The North American event was held in September in Washington, DC In November, the Global/Asia-Pacific meeting was held in Bangalore, India; developed in collaboration with the IEEE Future Networks World Forum. A conference on Europe, the Middle East, and Africa was also held in November, in Abuja, Nigeria.
Topics discussed at the conferences included infrastructure solutions for global connectivity; sustainable business models; increasing domestic technology; and policy, legal, and financial issues.
As of press time, the dates for this year’s regional conferences have not been announced.
Community oriented events
To help bridge the gap between ideas and implementation, the Connect Community event was created to show how some new technologies can benefit people. The opening ceremony was in November in Bengaluru, India. During the day-long program, 10 of the challenge winners demonstrated their communication solutions to villagers from seven rural communities.
Dutta credits IEEE Life Fellow Rakesh Kumar for designing the event. Kumar leads IEEE Future Directions, which is where Future Networks started in 2017 as the 5G Initiative.
“Kumar wants to ensure that successful technology will be useful to society,” Dutta said.
To provide entrepreneurs with business skills
Dixit says the Future Networks team believes that holding a contest and distributing prizes is not enough.
“We wanted to track the winners, monitor their progress, and help them turn their ideas into businesses,” he said.
To that end, IEEE launched the Empowerment Through Mentorship program, where budding entrepreneurs are paired with industry leaders and experienced mentors who provide them with 1,000 days of mentorship, coaching them in growing their business.
“We launched an educational program to advance the cause,” said Dixit. “These people may be experts in developing technology, but they don’t know the challenges of marketing, how to raise money, and other aspects.”
The Lemelson Foundation, a Portland, Ore.-based organization affiliated with the IEEE, is partnering in the teaching program. The foundation’s philanthropic strategy is to cultivate a strong ecosystem for entrepreneurs in East Africa, India and the United States. It does this by providing entrepreneurs with tools including financing options and reaching out to communities that align with their passion.
The foundation chose to work with IEEE “because of its strong international network and focus on electrical engineering, which is an important part of the world’s telecommunications and energy infrastructure,” said Kory Murphy, Lemelson’s chief of US innovation and business programs.
“Other factors include IEEE’s focus on non-traditional or underserved areas in India,” says Murphy, “and its recognition that mentoring is critical to the successful implementation of new technologies.”
The IEEE started the first project in 2023 with the support of the Lemelson Foundation, to determine whether a continuous business education program is important and necessary, he says. It then conducted a survey in 2024 to gather information to better understand the needs of stakeholders, advisors, and entrepreneurs in India’s hard-to-reach areas. Although the first pilot program was restricted to that country only, its purpose was to learn from the experience and share the findings worldwide, he said.
“Our job is to help develop technology, look for gaps, see if it is good enough to be used in rural areas, such as those in Africa and India.” -Ashutosh Dutta, Connecting the unconnected cochair
“The organization’s involvement was aimed at evaluating specific activities, cooperation strategies, and understanding the budget requirements of the pilot program,” he said. “The main goal of the foundation is to allow conditions for innovation to occur within regional programs, especially to address the possibility of continuous, systematic and related training in technological innovation.”
The Empowerment Through Mentorship program is organized into three phases. One focuses on individuals and their needs, the program/technical level focuses on innovation, and the business level guides stakeholders from concept through product testing and validation. Within each track, participants engage in activities such as networking, finding financial support, and innovating, Murphy said.
“This method of a thousand days shows the belief that it takes a long time to train and support those who were locked out,” he said.
CTU advisors can be IEEE members or non-members who are successful entrepreneurs and own small or large companies, Dixit said. They can also work in academics.
“They must have a passion for training and teaching other people,” said Dixit. “We created a learning program that includes topics such as ways to get funding from investors and how to turn ideas into a profitable business. It’s not the technology that will make the product successful, it’s everything else that goes into it.”
To determine whether any projects presented by the challenge have the potential to become standard, the CTU working group is collaborating with the IEEE SA Industry Connections project on the 6G Rural Connectivity program and the Intelligent Village project. Projects considered for standards do not have to be winners. Any project that successfully passed the first stage, completed the requirements of the second stage, and requested a review will be considered.
Typically, about half of the submitted projects are reviewed for general impacts, Dutta said.
“We chose about 60 presentations that could be made the same,” he said. “Of those, we are working with the IEEE SA rapid reactive standards activity group to reduce it to five or 10 that may be similar.
“The CTU program is not only about developing technology or using it, but also setting the standard so that people around the world can use the standard.”
One such project led to the development of IEEE P1962, “Standard Method for Providing Broadband Communications in Rural Infrastructure Using Solar Panels as Optical Communications Receivers.” It specifies the design of an optical receiver that uses solar panels and associated circuitry to provide energy-efficient, affordable, and high-speed wireless communications.
“CTU has created a platform for the world to bring their ideas to one place where people can talk to each other about it,” said Dixit. “We are a unifying force.
We combine these multiple dimensions to connect the disconnected.”
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