Bell Labs was born on January 1, 1925 when AT&T merged with the Engineering Research and Development Department of Western Electronic. Today, as the innovation arm of Lucent Technologies, it undertakes the task of providing high-tech for building up the most advanced communication systems in the world.

Since its foundation, Bell Labs has put out more than 27,000 patents, with an average of four every day. In the 1920's and 30's, researchers of Bell Labs introduced the world long distance TV transmission and digital computer, which promoted the development of sound movie and artificial throat. In the 40's, two influential inventions-transistors and the information theory were presented by Bell Labs. The 50's and 60's were highlighted with such important inventions as solar battery, laser theory and satellites.

Currently, the global economy is forging rapidly ahead with the vigorous growth of the information industry. In such an information age, it is Bell Labs who has given birth to so many infrastructures which consist of networking, computers and software. Transistors, information theory and digital transmission, the solid foundation of physical, mathematical and technical support in information construction, have become milestones in the research history of Bell Labs.

In the past century, Bell Labs has brought the world a grand scale of new technologies and products such as fax machine, touch-tone telephone, digital modem, cellular phone, satellites, high speed wireless data system, solar battery, CCD, DSP, laser, optical fiber, optical amplifier, DWDM system, long distance television transmission, high density TV, UNIX, speech synthesis and recognition. C and C++ have become the most popular programming languages in practice, while the network management and operating system developed by Bell Labs support millions of world-wide phone calls and data connections every day. In a word, Bell Labs closely attaches its fate with every step in human civilization.

Bell Labs Research China

On March 23, 2000, Bell Labs launched a new research facility in Beijing, China - Bell Labs Research China (BLRC). It was the first time in its history that Bell Labs established a research laboratory outside the United States.

BLRC is a center of technical excellence and innovation to strengthen the support to Lucent business units and customers in the China and Asia Pacific region. Primarily, BLRC concentrates its efforts on applications. It develops innovative ideas on applications, implements these ideas by prototypes, and transfers these results to Lucent product houses and Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS). While developing truly innovative applications, we also do fundamental research in the fields of Internet technologies, software, wireless communications, optical networks, computer science, and applied mathematics. To solve the problems we encounter in applications, we go to fundamental research; backed by the fundamental research, we develop more powerful applications.

BLRC has built a close collaborative relationship with Chinese scientific, technological and educational communities. Meanwhile, the laboratory is collaborating with local Lucent branches, and initiating collaborations with industries and universities in Australia and New Zealand to create new business opportunities for Lucent.

Currently, BLRC has employed the researchers who are talents from top universities in China. They devote themselves to the advancement of science and technology and make a great effort to establish themselves in the research community.

BLRC has fully committed itself to achieving its goal of establishing a center of technical excellence and innovations to strengthen the support to Lucent business units and customers in the China and Asia Pacific region. Many research projects have been initiated and completed in the fields of all-optical networks, next generation Internet IPv6, wireless communications, and interoperability testing of integrated communication and software systems. Some research results are being transferred to Lucent's business units for further product development, and patent applications have been filed for the IP router testing software system, optical networks management system and some achievements on wireless communications. BLRC is also pioneering in the work of system integration and interoperability. Its IPv6 edge router research prototype with multi-services for Access and Metro has been successfully implemented for the invention and development of new IPv6 technologies. On April 23, 2001, BLRC joined China's Next Generation Internet as one of the first foreign invested research institutions.

Since 2004, BLRC has concentrated on innovative application research. The four application-orientated projects have been developed quickly. Their prototypes were demonstrated at Application Day in Sept. 2004 in Murray Hill. Several BU product houses and marketing teams are interested in these projects. We may also collaborate with LWS to provide professional services on the basis of these projects. To support these projects, following the coming IMS architecture, we have organized six functional teams working on SIP/RTP, Multimedia, User Profile, Policy Support, Location and Security. Such a structure makes a strong connection between applications and fundamental research, and provides a uniform platform for all applications.

BLRC is closely collaborating with the Chinese Universities. It has six joint research laboratories with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Fudan University, engaging in research on optical networks, next generation Internet IPv6, wireless communications, software systems and analysis and design of networks. In addition, BLRC jointly sponsors the national key projects and young scholar's foundation projects with National Natural Science Foundation of China.