Letter from our President of Bell Labs,
Dr. Jeong H. Kim

Dear Customers,

Rarely, if ever, in our industry has there been a moment such as this. On the one hand, a vista of opportunity and boundless possibility; on the other, a hazy and unsettling sense of technological, regulatory and market uncertainty. At such a time, when the virtues of disruption are sometimes hard to distinguish from the perils of chaos, it's no wonder that vendors and customers alike are exploring new rules to chart their courses to safety and prosperity.

Our dilemma, of course, is that, as leaders of the telecommunications revolution, we are sorely tempted to say there are no rules. Time and again, we have shown that as soon as one set of rules is proclaimed, we can remake it on the wave of a new technology, a new application or a new business model. Rules, like records, exist only to be broken.

And yet, even as change agents, we recognize certain imperatives. Certain constants, not rules we impose on ourselves - like the rules of a game - but rules we recognize as fundamental, like the dynamics of a market or the laws of physics. We know that customers migrate to value. We know that service providers and enterprises live and die by their abilities to deliver what their customers want - insight, awareness, entertainment, socialization, fulfillment, productivity - at the time and place they want it.

The question is, how are these fundamentals of the communications economy manifested in the shockingly new ecosystem of telecom? How - in the kaleidoscopic interplay of merging platforms and emerging business models - are these underlying imperatives being obscured? How are they being addressed? And who is best positioned to take advantage? How can we, as vendors, help our customers recognize and act on the "new" rules while remaining adaptable to game-changing possibilities just over the horizon?

These are the questions at the heart of this edition of Enriching Communications. Indeed, they are at the heart of what we do at Bell Labs. Our researchers - from mathematicians and network architects to nanotechnologists and human interface scientists - are collaborating across the company and across our client base on efforts that span security, privacy, geofencing, peer-to-peer transactions, identity management, and a host of initiatives that will provide for our customers, the insight and options they need to generate value for theirs.

In the articles that follow, we share a little of that insight, gleaned from Alcatel-Lucent researchers, strategists and customers who grapple every day with the new rules in our industry. We look forward to your feedback.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jeong H. Kim
President, Bell Labs
Alcatel-Lucent