BT Research

BT Research
Formation	1921
Type	Former government-owned body, now private research organisation
Purpose/focus	Telecommunications research
Location	Adastral Park, Martlesham, Suffolk, IP5 3RE
Parent organization	BT Group (BT Innovate & Design)
Website	www.btplc.com/innovation

BT Research is part of the BT Innovate & Design division of BT Group, a provider of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries.

The organisation embodies an 'open innovation' approach, drawing on external resources such as partnerships with universities, suppliers, partners, customers and start-ups to complement the value of BT's internal research and innovation programme. BT Group is also a partner in collaborative research projects that are part of the UK's Technology Strategy Board programme, the EU Seventh Framework Programme, and the EU Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.

Location

Adastral Park

BT's main research facility is located in the United Kingdom at Adastral Park, near Ipswich in the county of Suffolk. The Adastral Park site was first opened in 1975 and has grown since then to a facility today which has around 4,000 research and development people from both BT and some of its partner companies. Globally, BT has additional research labs in Beijing, Boston MA and Abu Dhabi. The focus of research at BT is Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

The Royal Air Force were the original residents of the site in Suffolk at RAF Martlesham Heath. Experimental aircraft test flights flew from the airfield and the name (Adastral Park) is intended to reflect the history of experimentation and innovation, which is the continuing focus for the Park.

Activities

Current research themes

Major theme areas are;

• Future of the Internet and network transformation
• Mobility and convergence
• Future of the Web and semantic intelligence
• Information and security systems
• Customer service and systems
• The digital home and sociable communications

Academic research partners

BT works closely with both academics and students in over 20 institutions globally and has strong partnerships with the University of Cambridge in the UK, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA and Tsinghua University in China. BT also leads the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre, a consortium of 22 Indian and UK industry and academic partners conducting breakthrough research into current and next generation fixed and wireless communications.

History

Main building

Research in the company was first established in 1921 at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, London. In 1968 BT began the move of its research to the new site at Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. By late 1969 small teams of researchers were working at Martlesham. The first new research building was formally opened on 21 November 1975 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The architect was Mr S. Spielrein. The new building housed 1,700 people.

Patents

By the turn of the Century [2000], the site had produced over 10,000 patents.

Recent Innovations coming from Adastral Park

1979 [September] - BT/PO launched Prestel, the world's first viewdata network.

1982 [April] - Europe's first satellite transmission service was launched with Adastral Park's Satellite dishes beamed the television signals to the Orbital Test Satellite, run by Eutelsat, allowing Finnish and Norwegian viewers to receive the (English language) signals.

1987 [August] - the world's first instantaneous translation of speech by computer was unveiled by BT's research laboratories.

1995 [June] - BT research designed and developed a Video on demand service, which was trialled in the local area [Ipswich - Colchester], with 2,500 customers. It used asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) over copper cables, with a set top box supplied by Apple. - article on trial

1999 [July] - BT announced that it had pushed commercial optical fibre transmission to 80Gbit/s. BT labs demonstrated the world's fastest regenerator - a photonic digital network component.

2002 [June] - Research and development teams designed and deployed a suite of new business systems allowing the launch of the UK's first commercial broadband internet access service.

2006 [October] - BT implemented the world's first fully automated 'spam buster' system to track down and tackle professional spammers and 'botnet'-infected customers on the BT broadband network.

2011 [July] - BT Researchers working in collaboration with University research teams in the UK, US, China and Australia examined and reported on, how communications technology is changing how people live their lives, at home and at work, young and old.

References

• BT's research into the impact of modern media and technology in our lives
• Working with MIT
• BT's approach to open innovation
• The Communications Miracle: The Telecommunications Pioneers from Morse to the Information Superhighway, John Bray, 1996, Plenum, ISBN 0306450429

External links

• BT Research
• BT Technology Journal
• BT Group
• Adastral Park

Articles

• Top 10 innovations that will change the world, MIT Technology Review - May 2010

• Making TV Social, Virtually, MIT Technology Review - January 2010

• Virtually family: An anthropological knowledge of the broadband internet

• Still living in this world of exponential change

Video clips

• Peter Cochrane on Inside Out
• Collaboration with the MIT Media Lab
• Collaboration with Energizer