Raj Singh’s wireless career has spanned the spectrum of roles in the industry: academic, consulting engineer, carrier, financial clearinghouse provider and investor. In addition to his many contributions to the industry, Raj and his wife Neera (Wireless Hall of Fame 2022) have been generous supporters of education and programs that enable today’s students to explore and to shape the technologies of the future.
Raj came to the U.S. from India as a college student, and began concentrating on radio frequency engineering as the FCC was formulating rules for a new cellular service. After earning his PhD in electrical engineering from SMU, he joined the faculty of Kansas State University in 1980. By 1983, Raj and Neera had formed a wireless technology consulting company called LCC, Inc. The following year they moved to Washington, D.C. to provide network design and engineering support to the newly licensed cellular carriers.
LCC expanded into an international firm providing network planning and system engineering to operators in over 30 countries. Raj also held cellular licenses in India and a number of Latin American markets. In 1986, he co-founded Appex, one of the first wireless roaming clearinghouses in the U.S., which was sold to Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1990. The Singhs subsequently launched Telcom Ventures, an investment firm specializing in telecommunications and related information technologies.
Raj’s belief in the power of education is evident in the support the Singhs have provided to numerous academic endeavors including the Penn Engineering Singh Program in Market and Social Systems Engineering, an endowed chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, and the Raj and Neera Singh Professorship at the Whiting School of Engineering of Johns Hopkins University.
Raj serves on the Johns Hopkins Board of Trustees, the Penn Engineering Board of Overseers, and the Board of Directors of the National Chamber Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2012 in San Jose, CA.