Formed August 1984 Founded August 1984 | Jurisdiction India Founder Sam Pitroda Headquarters Delhi | |
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Minister responsible Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology Agency executives Shri Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director
Shri Soundarakumar M, Director Type of business Autonomous Centre of Excellence in Telecom Profiles | ||
The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. It was established in 1984 with initial mandate of designing and developing digital exchanges. C-DOT has expanded to develop intelligent computer software applications. It has offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. It is one of the 2 Indian Government organisations which have been appraised at Maturity Level 5 of CMMI-DEV v1.3, other being Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) Software Technology Centre.
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Recently in the month of February 2014, United Telecoms Limited the technology licensee of CDOT had won GPON order from BBNL to a value of Rs 1000 Cr approximately. This is the biggest win by any CDOT partner in global competitive bidding in recent years.For the same project National Optical Fibre Network C-DOT won the NMS tender.
History
The Centre for Development of Telematics was established in August 1984 as an autonomous body. Its goal was to develop telecommunication technology to meet the needs of the Indian telecommunication network.
Sam Pitroda started the C-DOT as an autonomous telecom R&D organisation. In the initial years, a telecom revolution in rural India that was responsible for all-round socio-economic development from global connectivity. As part of its development process, C-DOT spawned equipment manufacturers and component vendors. Research and development facilities were located at its Delhi and Bangalore campuses.
Within a short time, telecom switching products suited to Indian conditions appeared in the form of small rural automatic exchanges (RAXs) and medium size switches as SBMs for towns. This was followed by higher capacity digital switches known as main automatic exchanges (MAXs). C-DOT technology spread across the country through its licensed manufacturers..
Beginning with digital switching systems, C-DOT developed products for optical, satellite and wireless communication from circuit switching technology, ATM and next generation networks. From a purely hardware development centre, it diversified into development of telecom software like IN, NMS, Data Clearing House and from a protected environment of closed market to an open and competitive market.
While developing the RAX/MAX digital switches, C-DOT also evolved processes and procedures for manufacturing the switches in Indian factories which set up an Indian manufacturing vendor base. Later, C-DOT projects included central monitoring systems for telecom security, for the Indian government.
C-DOT's role in Surveillance
In 2014, the non-profit group Reporters without Borders published their annual report on countries which are "Enemies of the Internet and/or under surveillance", in which India was labelled as a country with widespread ongoing governmental surveillance of its citizens with little oversight. C-DOT was among the international agencies listed with a mandate of surveillance of Indian citizens and other network traffic within India.C-DOT is working on the project called CMS, which is similar to the PRISM project of NSA.