Nokia Bell Labs Celebrates 100 Years of Innovations

Nokia Bell Labs celebrates 100 years of pioneering innovations, shaping the past, present, and future. Over the last century, the research lab successfully invented some of the most important things for modern life, like transistors, solar cells, and lasers. This has laid the groundwork for the digital age and paved a path to the internet. Today, it continues to chart new paths in space communications, quantum, AI, foundational technologies, and sensing to address humanity’s most pressing challenges.

“The last century would be unrecognizable without Nokia Bell Labs. We established the foundations for modern communications, computing, and the internet, setting the standard for the telecommunications industry, with a profound impact on people and communities worldwide. Our legacy is embedded in every bit within the billions of terabytes that flow through global networks each year and our dedicated researchers are tirelessly working on the groundbreaking innovations that will shape the future,” said Nishant Batra, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer at Nokia.

Over the past 100 years, Nokia Bell Labs researchers have made revolutionary discoveries in radio astronomy, semiconductors, Information Theory, and cellular communications that have driven U.S. and global innovation and laid the groundwork for the digital age. These breakthroughs and many others have resulted in 10 Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards, as well as three Emmys, two Grammys, and an Academy Award.

Today, its legacy lives on in wavelengths, wires, and bits as it charts new paths in space communications, quantum, artificial intelligence, foundational technologies, and sensing that address humanity’s most pressing challenges. Nokia Bell Labs is setting world-record optical speeds to meet the insatiable global demand for high-speed communication, deploying cellular networks that will underpin sustained human presence on the Moon and beyond, and conducting industry-leading 6G research that will fuse the physical, digital, and human worlds.

“At Nokia Bell Labs, we don't just follow trends, we create them. Our researchers focus on solving hard problems that have a real human need to come up with the next big thing. From pioneering concepts for 6G and world-firsts in fiber technology to innovations in sensing and understanding that fuse the physical, digital, and human worlds, we are redefining how we perceive the world around us and augmenting our capabilities,”​ said Peter Vetter, President of Bell Labs Core Research at Nokia.

“For the last 100 years, Nokia Bell Labs has been​ harnessing the extraordinary imaginations ​of our researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible and create transformative real-world solutions. In our next century, we are delivering the communication building blocks here on Earth as well as for a rapidly growing space economy that underpins sustained human presence on the Moon – and beyond,” added Thierry E. Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia.