NEC Europe Ltd. established the Network Laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany in 1997 as NEC's research facility focusing on networking in Europe. Research and development functions are integrated into the same organization to shorten the time to market of cutting-edge network technologies. The laboratories place special emphasis on solutions meeting the needs of NEC's European customers.

The Heidelberg labs focus on software-oriented research and development for the next generation Internet. New communication architectures and protocols supporting multimedia and mobility over the Internet, together with intelligent Internet services, are the core of our work. A market research team continuously analyses market trends and market requirements to ensure that R&D activities address actual market needs.

During the last decade the laboratories have become a recognised partner in various collaborative research and development projects conducted jointly with European services providers, technology vendors and academic research groups. The labs are leading contributors to the European Union's Information Society Technology program (EU IST), as well as various national German R&D activities. Our staff actively contributes to scientific conferences as well as standard organisations like IETF, 3GPP, TISPAN or OMA.

Our continuous challenge is to accelerate the exploitation of research results in NEC's communication products and to strengthen NEC's European business through joint work with current and future NEC customers.