About Us

Excellence Since 1986

Company Overview


GL Communications Inc. has over 35 years of experience in the telecommunications industry providing consulting services. GL has a comprehensive suite of testing solutions to verify network performance in various telecom networks including wireless, fiber optic and traditional land line networks.


GL works with major telecom equipment vendors, service providers, and system integrators to meet testing requirements arising at various stages of the product development life-cycle. Our test platforms provide unprecedented visualization, capture, storage, portability, convenience and cost-effectiveness.


GL Communications Inc.


USA - Headquarters

  • GL Communications Inc.


    818 West Diamond Avenue - Third Floor
    Gaithersburg, MD 20878, USA

     

Product & Sales - Contact

Vikram Kulkarni

Branch offices

GL India, Bangalore


GL Communications India Pvt. Ltd.
#1, “Uma Admirality”, Ground Floor,
Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore - 560029
India

Product & Sales - Contact

Sanjeev Kulkarni

GL China, Shanghai


5H, Hua Min Empire Plaza,
728 West Yan An Road,
Shanghai - 200050
China

Product & Sales - Contact

Jianxiong Ding

  • +86 13816090264
  • +86 2162370268, +86 2162703066
  • +86 2162370269 Ext 103
  •  glchina@gl.com

Brief History

GL Communications Inc. was formed by Vijay Kulkarni and T. Bruce Yost on October 22, 1986. Vijay and Bruce met in 1985 while working as engineers at FiberTrak in Reston, VA. FiberTrak was a company formed by two railroads ( Norfolk Southern & Southern Pacific) to design and build a communications network along their railroad right-of-ways across the United States. A friendship and long-term partnership that has lasted twenty years was formed. Out of this friendship, GL was born.

 

Major Landmarks

  • June 1989 - GL Communications moved into its first office at 963A Russell Avenue in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and hired one full time employee.
  • 1990 through 1995 - GL Communications hires an additional seven full time employees
  • 1991 - GL Communications moves into expanded offices at 841 F&G Quince Orchard Boulevard in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
  • 1991 GL Communications completes the sale of its first T1 card
  • 1992 GL Communications attends their first trade show
  • October, 1993 GL Communications sends out its first international shipment
  • 1996 through 2001 - GL Communications hires an additional sixteen full time employees
  • 1998 - GL Communications website www.gl.com goes online
  • August 2000 - GL Communications moves its headquarters to 207A Perry Parkway in Gaithersburg, Maryland
  • December 2000 - GL Communications closes out its first year of $10M in sales
  • February 2001 - GL Communications opens an office in Bangalore, India
  • February 2003 - GL Communications opens a representative office in Shanghai, China
  • July 29, 2005 - GL loses one of their beloved Co-founders, Thomas "Bruce" Yost
  • September, 2007 – GL Communications moves its headquarters into an expanded and newly renovated office space at 818 West Diamond Ave., Third Floor, Gaithersburg, MD.

Products

GL's test tools range from simple PC-based software test tool to all-encompassing hardware-based test tools with futuristic expansion capacities. GL's test solutions cover wide array of networks -

 

  • WIRELESS - 5G, 4G , 3G, 2G
  • IP, Ethernet
  • T1, E1, T3, E3, PSTN
  • OC-3/STM-1, OC-12/STM-4

 

The tools are widely used by the telecommunication industry for conformance testing, automated stress/load testing, performance testing, remote accessibility, centralized web-based control and analysis, fault testing and analysis, and customized testing.

 

GL also offers a versatile line of products such as MAPS™PacketExpert™, IPNetSim™ and Voice-Video-Data QoS test suite that are ideal for simulating and testing advanced telecommunications networks and network elements such as switches, gateways and transmission systems. In addition to supporting wide variety of protocols, they provide the ability to simulate traffic (Voice, Digits, Tones, Talk, etc.) on the established calls to perform load/stress testing. A comprehensive suite of protocol analysis applications provides a detail packet-to-packet investigation, thus allowing packet loss, delay, jitter, and so on to be calculated automatically. Real-time RTP (voice) monitoring and capturing completes a powerful VoIP solution. 

GL's Voice-Video-Data QoS Test Suite complements all of GL's products. Using ITU-standard algorithms (PESQ and POLQA), GL's Voice Quality Testing provides a widely accepted voice quality measurements across multiple networks (Wireless, VoIP, T1/E1/T3/PSTN, etc.).

 

A broad classification of the test and measurement solutions based on different networks is detailed in Company Overview brochure.

 

Consulting Services

GL Communications Inc. provides consulting services for telecommunication companies all around the world. We offer consulting services for WIRELESS, SONET/SDH, T1/E1, and T3/E3 testing and analysis, and system design of wireless, satellite, fiber optic, and microwave networks.

 

Please visit Consulting Services webpage for any additional information regarding GL's consulting services.

Our Core Team

Vijay Kulkarni
CEO & CTO

Vijay Kulkarni is GL's President and CTO since inception of the company in 1986. He has consulted for various organizations including MTA-Baltimore, MBTA-Boston, ATT, MCI, Sprint, Intelsat, SP Telecom, Cable and Wireless, FAA and many cellular communications providers nationwide.

 

Prior to founding GL, he was an independent consultant, an Advisory Engineer at Satellite Business Systems, and an Engineer at Western Union.

 

Mr. Kulkarni holds an MSEE from GW University, Washington DC and is a member of IEEE.

Kuldip Battu
VP - Consulting Services

Kuldip Battu leads GL's consulting group. He leads consulting projects for many customers including Washington Metro Systems, MTA-Baltimore, SEPTA-Philadelphia and MBTA-Boston, and many telecommunications service providers nationwide.

 

Prior to joining GL in 1990, Mr. Battu was a research assistant at Electrical Engineering department of Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

 

Mr. Kuldip Battu holds an MSEE from the same university.

Robert Bichefsky
Director of Engineering

Robert Bichefsky leads development and management of Voice and Data Quality products including VQuad™VQTIPNetSim, APS, and Packet Series products. He also manages international operations in GL's China and India offices. As GL's Project Manager, Robert supported development of a TDMA Burst Time Plan Generation System and Multi-System Digital Telephone Exchange Simulator for Intelsat, T1/E1 ISDN Protocol Analyzer and T1/E1 Signaling Bit Recorder.

 

Prior to joining GL in 1995, he was a Research Engineer at IIT Research Institute, Annapolis.

 

MD. Mr. Bichefsky holds a BSEE from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

Matt Yost
Director Consulting Services

Matt Yost, PMP currently leads business efforts for the consulting engineering group and works closely with GL's customers and business partners.  He has led projects for many transit agencies, including WMATA, MTA-Baltimore and TransLink in Vancouver, BC. 

 

Prior to joining the consulting group, he worked with GL's product development team where he led efforts on the Universal Telephony Adapter (UTA) and was the initial Product Manager of GL's VQuad™ software, both of which are related to GL's Voice Quality Testing systems. Mr. Yost also led activities and supported efforts deploying a T1 Monitoring System, responsible for monitoring the United States Postal Service's (USPS) T1 network.  

 

Mr. Yost joined GL in 2000 after graduating from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA with a BSCE degree.

Uvaldo Cordero
Sr. Systems Engineer

Uvaldo Cordero leads consulting projects on communication systems. He supports major telephone service providers, and wireless, transit and railroad operators in design and development of solutions to meet their needs.

 

Prior to joining GL in 2001, he was at Verizon Communications as a Team Leader (Network Operations), US Army Corps of Engineers as an Information Technology specialist, and Dynamics Atlantic, Puerto Rico overseeing the IT infrastructure of the entire company.

 

Mr. Cordero holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Puerto Rico and a Masters Degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, MD.

Kam F. Yee
Principal Systems Engineer

Kam Yee leads and works on consulting projects related to design of solutions for Communications and Control & Monitoring systems for transit agencies (WMATA-Washington DC, MTA-Baltimore MD, MBTA-Boston, MA, and TransLink-Vancouver BC) and railroad operators (Amtrak). His work includes system-level engineering design and development of specifications for Control Centers, Control & Monitoring, and SCADA Systems for light rail and heavy rail; and design of radio communications systems in aboveground and underground geographical locations. Project highlights involve: Power and Communications for Digital Displays for public advertising at WMATA metro stations; Automatic Train Control (ATC) and Computer-Based Train Control (CBTC) system for MTA Baltimore Metro; Railcar Fleet Replacement for MTA Baltimore Metro; Bus Unified System Architecture for MTA Baltimore bus fleet.

 

Mr. Yee is also a Systems Engineering Quality Assurance specialist, providing Maryland MTA transit agency's oversight on contract work and deliverables performed by external parties, to ensure quality of work and compliance with FTA quality management systems guidelines. Prior to joining GL in 2011, he held dual roles as a product engineering technical lead and project manager at JDSU (formerly Acterna and TTC), where he led and supported project development and product lifecycle management (design, manufacture and obsolescence) for communications networks test equipment for electrical (TDM), optical (SONET, SDH) and packet-based (Ethernet) networks.

 

Mr. Yee has served in an Advisory Area Committee for the Corridor Cities Transitway Project (Montgomery County, MD). He is also an adjunct faculty in the Department of Engineering and serves in a governance council at Montgomery College (Rockville, MD).

 

Mr. Yee is a certified Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Maryland and a credentialed Project Management Professional (PMP). He earned a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, a MS degree in Electrical Engineering, a BS degree in Electrical Engineering, and a BS degree in Computer Engineering, all from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.

Sami Najjar
Project Director

Sami Najjar is a Project Director on consulting projects in communications and transit systems. He has led projects for transit agencies including MTA-Baltimore and TransLink in Vancouver, BC. He has managed projects involving upgrades to Call Centers and has led tasks on the engineering design and development of a communication network and train control system for a CBTC based Metro project.

 

Prior to joining GL in 2012, he was a software development manager at JDSU and Hughes Network Systems and was a project and systems architecture manager at Comcast, Alcatel and Sprint.

 

Mr. Najjar holds a B.S in Electrical Engineering from the University of S. Florida and a M.S in Electrical Engineering from the George Washington University, Washington DC. He has been PMP certified since 2011.

Greg Pedersen
Project Director

Greg Pedersen currently provides engineering and project management services to the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA). He has consulted for the Department of Defense, FAA, and WMATA. Prior to joining GL in 2017, Mr. Pedersen worked at Rockwell Collins as a principal systems engineer, Fannie Mae as a network engineer, and Overlook Systems Technologies in the area of satellite navigation.


Additionally, he served in the United States Navy as an electronics technician (communications and radar). Mr. Pedersen holds a BSEE from Old Dominion University.

Vikram Kulkarni
Senior Systems Engineer

Vikram Kulkarni has a PhD in physics from Rice University where he wrote FORTRAN codes simulating electromagnetic phenomena at the nanoscale. Upon graduation, he worked for 3 years at the Institute for Defense Analyses, advising the Department of Defense on cyber security related matters. He worked with penetration testers and network defenders to assess vulnerabilities in DoD networks and information systems. At GL, he supports sales and marketing efforts on all product lines. He enjoys working with customers to find solutions to their toughest telecom testing needs.