Nokia Bell Labs Antwerp

Overview

The Antwerp campus is co-located with one of Nokia's main R&D sites, inherited from Alcatel and Alcatel-Lucent following the 2016 Nokia-Alcatel-Lucent merger. It hosts Nokia's Fixed Networks headquarters, a major IP and Cloud R&D department, and the Bell Labs research arm working on medium and longer-term fundamental research. Belgian Bell Labs researchers have published widely on passive optical networks, fixed wireless access, and time-sensitive networking.

Research activities span two principal axes. The first is converged access technologies, including optical and wireless physical layers, signal processing and algorithms, hardware platforms, and network architectures and protocols. The second is software and systems, encompassing federated stream processing, Web3 software systems, privacy-enabling technologies, AI-driven software development tools, and AI network automation.

Bell Labs Belgium maintains long-standing research partnerships with imec and KU Leuven, and contributes to European Horizon programs alongside academic and industrial partners across the continent. The Belgian footprint sits inside a broader Nokia presence in the country that traces back to ITT, Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company, and Alcatel, and that has long anchored Belgian telecom R&D in Antwerp and Gent.