In this blogpost I would like to talk a bit more about Nokia Bell Labs and Nokia itself. Now that I completed a great, six week internship at Nokia Bell Labs – Antwerp. It was a unique learning experience!
First of all, just to get it out of the way, yes it is part of the same Nokia as in the renowned ‘Nokia-phone’! But they do so much more (and I really mean a lot more) than that. So Nokia is a telecommunication-specialized company that develops in different parts of that market. Bell Labs is a research division within Nokia, with a rich history of revolutionary engineering. For example, the transistor, opened a Gate of new possibilities. Engineers could Drain their minds for novel applications in Bulk. Truly, a Source of new building-blocks evolved for Electrical Engineering:
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley developed the first transistor in 1947, while the three were members of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. They were later awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 “for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect”.
Extract based on Wikipedia page about the transistor.
“Bell Labs, a division of Alcatel-Lucent, brought to Nokia an unparalleled history of technological innovation including: lasers, transistors, and UNIX. Bell labs researchers led analog, digital and mobile shifts in communication technology; the development of the Internet; and the innovation of wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) enabling huge increases in network capacity. Bell Labs launched the mobile revolution.”
Extract from Nokia’s website about their history
Some of the more recent developments that they are working on, are for example, the Fiber-to-home experience to get a higher datarate from end-to-end. This means that the internet connection you receive at home, or a good part of it, was most-likely researched and engineered by Nokia Bell Labs. Also on the 5G-wireless side of the story, they are developing some innovative solutions.
And I could be part of the Nokia Bell Labs division in Antwerp for six amazing, fascinating, enriching weeks! I learned a lot about Electrical Engineering and their inclusive business culture. It is incredible to know that the project I worked on, will be used in several months for testing purposes. So hereby, I would like to thank everyone again for the wonderful time I spent in Antwerp.
Now I’ll be preparing myself to head out to New York. Until soon.
Arnaud
Arnaud from KU Leuven to Columbia University 