AT&T Labs Research - November 2010

The Official Story on AT&T Mark the Spot

by: Mark Austin and Mike Wish, Tue Oct 05 16:47:00 EDT 2010

Customers and engineers evaluate the network differently. Engineers want precise metrics: data speed, retainability, throughput. Customers care about completing calls, fast downloads, and smooth playing of video and music.

What's the overlap between the two domains? To find out, AT&T created the Mark the Spot^SM app. It lets customers easily report problems they care about while automatically appending the network metrics needed by engineers.

The resulting data, when analyzed by AT&T Research and Network Teams, helps AT&T better understand both the network and customers, prioritize upgrades, and validate other data sources.

A Collaboration: Network Coding + Reliability

AT&T Research relies on collaborations to assemble the skill sets and specialized knowledge needed for solving scientific and engineering problems.

In one such collaboration, university and AT&T researchers are combining practical and theoretical solutions to make wireless networks reliable and efficient.

Featured Project: Speech mashups

Speech mashups make it easy for developers to add a speech interface to mobile apps. All speech processing is done in the AT&T cloud using the latest technologies from AT&T Research. To open a free account and download instructions, register at the speech mashup portal.

A tutorial will be given at the Mobile Voice Conference (January 24-26) by Giuseppe Di Fabbrizio. Click here to sign up.

Conference cites impact of paper by Zave, co-authors

The paper A Reference Model for Requirements and Specifications by AT&T Researcher Pamela Zave and co-authors Michael Jackson, Carl A. Gunter, and Elsa L. Gunter was named as one of the most influential in the past 10 years by the 18th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering.

The award, given September 30, recognized the paper's influence in establishing the field of requirements engineering.