Ottawa’s Carleton University will jointly work with Alcatel Canada Inc. to research and develop telecommunication technologies, company officials announced Tuesday.
Ottawa-based Alcatel is a telecommunications network provider.
Carleton represents the first Canadian university to take part in Alcatel’s Research Partner Program and will work closely with Alcatel’s Ottawa Research & Innovation Center.
Carlton joins several worldwide academic institutions participating in the program including Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC), University of Texas, Dallas (UTD) and University of Stuttgart in Europe.
The partnership contributes to Alcatel’s long-term development of telecom technologies and product concepts, said Alcatel CTO Zlatko Krstulich.
Although the telecommunication industry has struggled the past couple of years, Alcatel “continues to invest in research and development that our customers need,” Krstulich said, adding some of the researched technology topics include statistical analysis of network traffic patterns, data communications and network security and management.
Carleton was selected due to its strong knowledge base and commitment to high technology, he added.
Even though the R&I Center and the Research Partner Program are designed to develop next-generation technologies, successful research could feasibly be adopted sooner, Krstulich said. “Sometimes as you develop new products there’s a fork in the road that is shorter term where you need to bring to bring some of that expertise to bear,” Krstulich said.
“Carleton University is a national leader in telecommunications research and we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with Alcatel in furthering technological innovation,” said Carleton University President Richard Van Loon in a prepared statement.