MWC 2013 Video: Bell Labs Designs Future-Proof Networks

Alcatel-Lucent was one of several telecommunications companies that were presenting Small Cell network technologies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Our colleagues from Silicon Week Spain have asked Theodore “Tod” Sizer, lead for Access Research at Bell Labs in New Jersey, to tell us more about Small Cells, Machine-to-Machine communication, “green” mobile networks and other technology developed by Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D subsidiary.

The network of tomorrow

Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecoms equipment manufacturer with over a century of history, headquartered in Paris. Lately, the company has been going through something of a rough patch: it posted a loss of €1.37 billion (£1.17bn) in fourth quarter of 2012, prompting the resignation of the CEO Ben Verwaayen, who had held this position since 2008.

Now, the company plans to use new developments – Software-Defined Networks, Small Cells and M2M – to reverse its fortunes.

Sizer says that Alcatel-Lucent has been bringing its Small Cell technology to MWC for the past three years, but the current event marks the first time all of the infrastructure pieces have come together.

He also notes that the use of smartphones and mobile data has been slowly moving indoors, and poses challenges that the traditional network design cannot solve.

To find out more, watch the video below:

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