Madurai: The scope for Microwave Engineering and Wireless Technology (MEWT) would be very high in the coming years and it would overtake even Software and Information Technology, says Kewal K Khanna, President of the Agilent Technology.

Participating at the inaugural function of the Agilent Communications Laboratory, funded by Agilent Technologies, at the Thiagaraja College of Engineering in Madurai on April 18, he said both Microwave Networking and Wireless Technology needed lot of 'hands-on training', which required state of the art laboratory.

He regretted that there were no takers for the Agilent Technologies equipments, though the company offered them to engineering colleges with discount. The company also offered to share knowledge as it was involved in research programme around the world.

More than 300 research programmes were going on in the best universities and knowledge about those research programmes would take the country's engineering colleges to higher echelon.

Even when donations were made for laboratories or for other programmes, the utilisation was uneven, he said. The Agilent Technologies Laboratories would help take up experiments on various fields. They would also convert the "text book engineers into hands-on engineers, with practical experience, who would get employment easily", he said.

PTI