Bell Putting on Pinocchio Nose
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Bell Labs, formerly the research arm of U.S. telephone company AT&T and now part of Paris-based communications firm Alcatel-Lucent, has still not taken any action on its four-year-old promise to open a laboratory in Korea.
By the latest indication, the renowned research center is not likely to match its words with actions.
Jeong Kim, Bell Labs president, told reporters Wednesday without elaborating that there would be good news about its establishment.
Kim is visiting Seoul to take part in the 18th World Economic Forum on East Asia, which kicked off Thursday.
The New Jersey-based organization signed a memorandum of understanding with Seoul City in December 2005 about the project as its first Asian laboratory.
The research and development (R&D) center, tentatively named Seoul Bell Laboratories, was supposed to develop information and communications technology business models to link Korean universities with related businesses.
Six months later, in June 2006, Bell Labs again inked an agreement. It announced it would create the center in the Digital Media City building in northwestern Seoul near Sangam World Cup Stadium, and employ more than 20 researchers.
The laboratories, which was expected to make an annual investment of around five billion won in the facility, also said it would plan to manage joint projects with Korean universities and some organizations affiliated with the now defunct Ministry of Information and Communication.
For three years, there has been little progress. Kim reaffirmed the plan was still good to go during his 2007 visit to Korea.
Few tangible results have been made in terms of business-university cooperation. The only notable achievement came from a MOU signed with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute to expand ties in next-generation information technologies, including advanced optical communication equipment and network applications, wireless communication technologies and computing science.
Some speculate that the Bell-Seoul project was an example of eagerness gone wild ― Bell playing along with Seoul's request for investment in order to curry favor with it for future business deals.
The Korean unit of Lucent-Alcatel was not immediately available for comment.
Lucent-Alcatel, the mother company of Bell Labs, came into being as the result of the 2006 merger between Lucent Technologies, a spin-off from AT&T, and its French competitor Alcatel.