Telecom R&D

In January AT&T announced the creation of the WarnerMedia Innovation Lab, which is a research group that will try to combine AT&T technology advances and the company’s huge new media content. The lab, based in New York City, will consider how 5G, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality can work to create new viewer entertainment experiences.

This is an example of a highly directed R&D effort to create specific results – in this case the lab will be working on next-generation technologies for entertainment. This contrasts with labs that engage in basic research that allow scientists to explore scientific theories. The closest we’ve ever come to basic research from a commercial company was with Bell Labs that was operated by the old Ma Bell monopoly.

Bell Labs was partially funded by the government and also got research funds from ratepayers of the nationwide monopoly telco. Bell Labs research was cutting edge and resulted in breakthroughs like the transistor, the charge coupled device, Unix, fiber optics, lasers, data networking and the creation of the big bang theory. The Lab created over 33,000 patents and its scientists won eight Nobel Prizes. I was lucky enough to have a tour of Bell Labs in the 80s and I was a bit sad today when I had to look on the Internet to see if it still exists; it does and is now called Nokia Bell Labs and operates at a much smaller scale than the original lab.

Another successor to Bell Labs is AT&T Labs, the research division of AT&T. The lab engages in a lot of directed research, but also in basic research. AT&T Labs is investigating topics such as the physics of optical transmission and the physics of computing. Since its creation in 1996 AT&T Labs has been issued over 2,000 US patents. The lab’s directed research concentrates on technologies involved in the technical challenges of large networks and of working with huge datasets. The Lab was the first to be able to transmit 100 gigabits per second over fiber.

Verizon has also been doing directed research since the spin-off of Nynex with the divestiture of the Bell system. Rather than operate one big public laboratory the company has research groups engaged in topics of specific interest to the company. Recently the company chose a more public profile and announced the creation of its 5G Lab in various locations. The Manhattan 5G Lab will focus on media and finance tech; the Los Angeles lab will work with augmented reality (AR) and holograms; the Washington DC lab will work on public safety, first responders, cybersecurity, and hospitality tech; the Palo Alto lab will look at emerging technologies, education, and big data; and its Waltham, Massachusetts, lab will focus on robotics, healthcare, and real-time enterprise services.

Our industry has other labs engaged in directed research. The best known of these is CableLabs, the research lab outside Denver that was founded in 1988 and is jointly funded by the world’s major cable companies. This lab is largely responsible for the cable industry’s success in broadband since the lab created the various generations of DOCSIS technology that have been used to operate hybrid-fiber coaxial networks. CableLabs also explores other areas of wireless and wired communications.

While Comcast relies on CableLabs for its underlying technology, the company has also created Comcast Labs. This lab is highly focused on the customer experience and developed Comcast’s X1 settop box and created the integrated smart home product being sold by Comcast. Comcast Labs doesn’t only develop consumer devices and is involved in software innovation efforts like OpenStack and GitHub development. The lab most recently announced a breakthrough that allows cable networks to deliver data speeds up to 10 Gbps.