Sanjeev Banzal

Director General
Education and Research Network of India, (ERNET India)

Shri Sanjeev Banzal is the Director General of Education and Research Network (ERNET), India. ERNET India is in forefront of connecting educational and research institutions through wireline, wireless and satellite medium. It is also providing digital infrastructure to educational institutes. Under Shri Banzal’s leadership ERNET has ventured into new areas like establishing data centres etc.

Before joining ERNET, he was working as Advisor with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Shri Banzal possesses more than 30 years of professional experience in diverse fields in Information & Communication Technologies. He has been at leadership positions in areas of policies and regulations, Technology Development, Project Management, Marketing, Material Management, Training and Capacity Building, Procurement and Contract Management and consumer affairs etc.

He has extensively worked in formation of policies and regulations for the Indian Telecom Sector in the areas of Cellular Mobile Licensing, Spectrum Management, Emergency Telecommunication, Mobile Number Portability, VSAT, M2M/IoT, ICT for Smart cities, ICT needs for Persons with Disabilities (PwD) etc. He has also handled Consumer Affairs for telecom and broadcasting sector for the country.

At International level he headed study group-2 at International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva as Rapporteur on the issues of ‘Utilization of ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction and the management’ for the period 2018-21. He was also vice-rapporteur of the study of ‘Smart Cities and Society’ for the period 2018-21. He was the Chairman of working group on Spectrum for the South Asian Telecom Regulators Council (SATRC) under Asia-Pacific Tele community (APT) Bangkok for the period 2012-14.

Shri Banzal has been a speaker at several international seminars/workshops/trainings conducted by ITU/APT/SATRC and other international organizations. He has written several articles in Telecom Journals and newspapers.

Shri Banzal has done his Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electronics from National Institute of Technology, Surat, Master of Engineering (ME) in Electronics and Telecommunications from Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Management Development Institutes (MDI), Gurgaon, India.