Bell Labs to rapidly expand research centre in B'lore

Move signifies growing importance of research in India

Bell Labs, the legendary research house, is set to expand rapidly in India. The year-old centre expects to raise its headcount of high-profile researchers beyond hundred over the next 2-3 years.

Normally, centres undertaking research, as opposed to development, hire people by the dozens, not multiples of them.

Compared to the modest plans with which Bell Labs' Bangalore centre opened, from now on it will expand rapidly. This is in line with India being one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets. Bell Labs is closely working with a clutch of service providers on how to make next-generation wireless and wireline networks deliver efficiently.

In addition to the agenda, like many other research units in emerging economies, Bell Labs in Bangalore is also working on ways to deliver low cost networking which will enable India and other developing countries to bridge the digital divide.

Detailing the plans, Rajeev Rastogi, executive director, Bell Labs Research India and also a Bell Labs fellow said: "Over the past one year, we have demonstrated how it has been possible to do research out of India and we are now in the technology transfer mode of quite a few key projects. Network management software is on top of our agenda and there has been quite a headway in our projects so far."

Even as India is contemplating graduating to 3G network, this research will enable wireless service subscribers to reap the benefits by enjoying rich media transmission over a single network.

"Presently, a few of such services are available in India such as multimedia messaging and gaming. However, these richer services will be delivered in a more systematic way on a single IP multimedia system in the near future and this is where a lot of research efforts are on," added Rastogi.

Bell Labs is also working with IIT-Kanpur and Chennai to deliver low-cost networks. "Wi-Fi and Wi-Max are the two aspects that will catapult these efforts and we are rolling out a project called Digital Gangetic Plain in association with IIT-Kanpur. There is immense scope for service providers to go after this mass market and deliver digital convergence efficiently," added Rastogi.