Message from Outgoing Chairman, Prof. Abhay Karandikar

Dear Colleagues,

I have handed over  the charge of Chairman TSDSI to Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director IIT Madras. As the new office bearers of TSDSI take charge, I fondly recall my association with TSDSI since its inception in leadership roles first as the Vice Chairman initially and then as the Chairman. The idea of forming a telecom standards development organization had been discussed several times in the past among various stakeholders but finally took its shape when the Ministry of Communications declared its intent to form an SDO in GSC meeting in Korea in May 2013. TSDSI formally came into existence as a registered society on 7th January 2014 though we started working informally since July 2013 with its first ever meeting held in C-DoT campus on 9th July 2013.

I am delighted to report that for the past five years, the organization has grown in strength both in terms of membership as well as in terms of technical activities.  As an organizational partner of 3GPP, Type 1 Partner of oneM2M and member of GSC, we are playing an important role on the global telecom standards landscape within a short span. In the last five years, we have strengthened our processes and reached a state of maturity where indeed we are in a position to influence international standards.

You would recall that one of the primary objectives with which we had setup TSDSI was to project Indian requirements and IPRs into international standards thereby catalyzing domestic design and manufacturing eco-system for telecom products.  This important objective requires concerted efforts from all of you to contribute and participate towards standards development through technical contributions.  It is the need of the hour for all of us to work together as team to spur the design and manufacturing growth in telecom industry ultimately leading to economic prosperity of the nation.

While the first five formative years of TSDSI have been  periods of learning from each other and from our international partners, I see the next five years to be a period of growth where we can make an impact at the national as well as at the international level. We have reached this far with hard work and support from all you and I am confident that you will work with even greater vigor in future.

I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to the present and past staff of TSDSI secretariat with whom I had an opportunity to work very closely.  The Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communications has been a constant pillar of support without which we would not have reached this milestone. I am confident that TSDSI would achieve greater heights during the term of the new Governing Council.  I wish TSDSI a great success.

-Abhay Karandikar

Director, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur 208016