October 16, 2014: Inventing the Network of You

More than 200 guests attended the Bell Labs Belgium Future X Day focused on Inventing the Network of You.  Guests included operators like Proximus, Ziggo, Telenet, KPN, Liberty Gobal, BSKYB, Telefonica, Etisalat, professors from universities in Belgium and the Netherlands, students, local research eco-system partners, and key decision makers of the European Commission and EIT ICT Labs.  All came with one common interest: Innovation!

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes opened the session with his view on the Shift Chapter 2, focusing on Innovation, Growth and Transformation, and the importance of Innovation for Alcatel-Lucent and for Europe, as we should close the digital gap with the U.S. and APAC.   

Alcatel-Lucent CTO and Head of Bell Labs, Marcus Weldon shared his vision on the Network 2020: the Network of You. In his view, as we move into a cloud world the networks become more malleable and eventually invisible. The complex challenges of connecting the dots in a cloud world require cross-disciplinary solutions that require partners who want to solve difficult industrial problems. An open ecosystem of innovation will help us be successful in our future innovation.

Marcus announced the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner for developing super-resolution microscopy techniques based on the fluorescence of molecules. Eric Betzig's main research occurred while he was active at Bell Labs. There were speeches by Luc Van de Hove, CEO of Research Organization IMEC, on the topic of foldable plastic chips and machine-to-machine communication, and Enrique Algaba, Director of Network Innovation and Virtualization for Telefonica, who shared the challenges Telefonica is facing with regards to Network Transformation and Evolution, and the way they are using their open innovation lab to work with existing and new partners to build the network of the future.

A showcase with 20 Bell Labs Innovations took the visitors through a world of wonders, lifting a tip of how future technologies can and will influence our daily lives. The full list of demonstrations included: 

  • Dynamic Stream & Network Control (Urban Security Missions)
  • World Wide Streams – An Infrastructure for Future Information Networking 
  • Scalable Video Delivery of Ultra High Definition Video
  • Model-Based Video Coding
  • Large Wireless Sensor Deployments Powered by Ambient Vibrations
  • 10 GBPS Copper Access: Complementing Fiber Deployments with XG-Fast
  • Bell Labs Consulting Services on Ultra Broadband
  • Context-Aware Radio Access for 5G (CARA-5G)
  • NGPON2 Decreasing the TCO of Residential ONUs by Wavelength Set Multiplexing
  • High-speed Serial Electrical Link – Beating Today’s Interconnect Standards
  • Virtual CPE for Residential Customers
  • Bell Labs Consulting Services on vCPE
  • Heterogeneous NFV Clouds
  • Continuous Querying in Distributed Clouds
  • An Elastic 100G Interface for Optical Transport Network
  • Machine Learning – Enhancing the Routing Process 
  • EMEA IP Transformation Center