Her Holiness Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (AMMA) launched the “Amrita-ISRO-Cognizant Technology Solutions Satellite-Based Education & Research Network for the Millennium” at Amritapuri, Kollam, Kerala on 15 May, 2004. This e-learning initiative, the first of its kind in the country, seamlessly connects the four Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham campuses at Amritapuri, Bangalore, Coimbatore and Kochi via satellite. Padma Bhusan Dr. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) inaugurated this path-breaking initiative from Amritapuri.

The inauguration of the initiative took place via satellite simultaneously – Prof. V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, from Coimbatore; Dr. Srikumar Benerjee, Director, Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), from Kochi; Mr. Balu Doraisamy, President, Hewlett Packard, from Bangalore. The event was attended by a host of distinguished persons from Academia, Industry and Government.

In his speech, Dr. G. Madhavan Nair explained how such satellite links hold the potential to transform India in terms of education and healthcare, both of which areas are being championed by Amma’s institutions. He said how inspired he’d been just days before at seeing doctors at Amma’s AIMS hospital at Kochi examining patients in remote areas of Leh-Ladakh and the Lakshadweep Islands via an ISRO satellite. And now, he said, Amma’s institutions were making bold steps on the education front as well.

This network transforms Amrita University into the first of its kind – a fully interactive, multi-disciplinary, multi-media, virtual campus without geographical limitations. Now students are any of the Amrita campuses can not only ‘attend’, but also interact in lectures taking place on the other campuses. Mr. B. Rajaram, Managing Director; Konkan Railways was the guest of honor at Coimbatore and Capt. Krishna Nair, Leela group of hotels and Mr. B.V. Jagadeesh, CEO, Netscaler, USA, the distinguished guests of honor at Bangalore campus.

A state-of-the-art E-learning Studio with six simultaneous synchronous LCD panels was launched at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Ettimadai campus on 7 July, 2004, by Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Indian IT major, Infosys Technologies. Mr. Bhaskar Narayan, Director, Satellite Communications, Indian Space Research Organization, (ISRO) was the distinguished guest of honour for the function.

This studio and e-classroom is the front-end of the high bandwidth satellite network, which has made Amrita University a fully interactive, multimedia capable, multi-disciplinary virtual university – the first of its kind in the nation. It will enable interactive classroom sessions across all four campuses of the university in the three south Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. The teacher is empowered with the unique capability of performing two-way live audio-video interaction between four AMRITA campuses located at Coimbatore, Kochi, Bangalore and Amritapuri (Kollam). The facility is equipped with 130 seats for classroom instruction, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using the dedicated satellite link with a bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps.