Bell Canada downsizes and realigns university research program

Bell Canada’s 11-year-old Bell University Laboratories (BUL) program has been cancelled and replaced by a smaller fund that targets skills development and telecom technologies more likely to generate a return on investment. The new Bell Innovation Fund (BIF) has been implemented in Quebec and negotiations are ongoing with universities in other provinces to expand it nationally. The change to one of Canada's richest corporate-academic funding programs comes as Bell seeks to re-orient its corporate strategy following last year's failed attempt to go private, which raised the ire of shareholders seeking to maximize their return on investment. It also follows a marked decline in BCE Inc.’s R&D spending, which fell 13.6% in FY07 to $1.26 billion. (also see chart) At its height, BUL was one of Canada's top industry programs supporting university research and was often used by universities to leverage government funding for major projects such as the University of Waterloo’s BUL. Since 1998, BUL awarded over $105 million to institutions across Canada – more than $38 million of this between 1999 and 2004. At one point, more than 40 institutions were conducting in excess of 80 R&D projects with BUL support. Bell’s website continues to list seven BULs across Canada, including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, with a focus on such technology areas as voice recognition, Internet protocol, VoIP, video, broadband access, wireless and wireless broadband. Francois Morin, Bell's senior VP communications, says the program will continue to be national, but with a more narrow focus. “Before it was way too generous which was nice for universities but … a lot of the research was not aligned with our core businesses, which is telecom technologies,” he says. “For Bell it makes more sense now. We want programs that we can leverage.” BUL's greatest presence is at the University of Toronto, where it supported approximately 30 projects simultaneously, coordinated through a dedicated office headed by an executive director and academic director. That office is in the process of disbanding although several projects are still ongoing. “It's a disappointment of course but Bell has been a good partner over the years. BUL allows graduate students to interact with companies in an environment that is real. We will miss it,” says outgoing executive director Leslie Dolman. “We were the largest BUL program in the country and had two BUL staff on the premises. BUL staffers managed the program and made sure the projects made sense using business rationale.” Dolman says that BUL money was initially used for projects in electrical and computer engineering and electrical engineering science. More recently, BUL funding went to support projects involving management policy, medicine and health. The Bell funds were often critical in obtaining support from federal and provincial government sources, including the Ontario R&D Challenge Fund and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The expanded range of R&D projects supported by BUL has been cited as a primary reason for BUL's revamping into the BIF, even though the greater scope was beneficial to the university and reinforced the recent trend towards collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects. “It was not an easy decision because there's tons of value collaborating with universities. But we needed return on investment and with the Bell Innovation Fund we are sure that we invest in things of value to Bell,” says Morin. “With BUL there was a lot of slippage over the years. A lot of research was not aligned with our core businesses such as research into governance, legal and even literature.” With the BIF, Morin says projects must be “totally aligned with what we do” and related directly to the technologies underlying Bell's business lines. The BIF has identified three R&D platforms for university research collaboration: Information Technology skills: It's estimated that the IT sector will require 90,000 people over the next several years; Green IT: Developing and implementing new systems and technologies to reduce power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; and, Technology Advancement for Prosperity: Technologies for improving productivity and ultimately the corporate bottom line.

Bell Canada downsizes and realigns university research program

News | 05/20/2009 3:42 pm EDT

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