The meander line antenna (MLA) is conventionally an electrically small antenna. Electrically small antennas pose several performance related issues such as narrow bandwidth, high VSWR, low gain and high cross polarization levels. In this paper a modified two element MLA is proposed. The modified MLA possesses novelty in terms of its geometrical shape, which is achieved with the unification of the two MLA elements. This altered geometry helped in better input impedance matching with the MLA elements and consequently achieving the dual band operation. The proposed antenna is designed to cater the ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) bands of 2.45 and 5 GHz. The antenna performance parameters are optimized to achieve reasonably wide impedance bandwidth, low VSWR, high gain and an omnidirectional radiation pattern. Moreover, the current distribution and the effect of the ground plane size on the altered MLA are discussed in this paper. © 2010 IEEE.