Nortel is teaming up with universities across the globe to develop new innovations that will help meet the growing demand for 4G mobile broadband applications like video, mobile TV and other multimedia services.

To increase its competitive advantage and foster new 4G mobile broadband technologies, Nortel has expanded its existing long-standing research partnerships with leading universities like the University of Waterloo in Canada, The University of Texas at Austin in the U.S., and National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taiwan. Nortel has also formed new partnerships with Mera Networks in Russia and Technische Universitaet Ilmenau in Germany. Nortel's investigations with these universities are designed to improve spectral efficiency, and decrease time to market for Nortel's 4G mobile broadband solutions, which include Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e), and the Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) cellular standards.

Nortel is expanding its existing relationship with the University of Waterloo which was announced in 2006 with Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Nortel is working closely with the Coding and Signal Transmission (CST) group of the University of Waterloo to increase the capacity of the future wireless networks through advanced multi-user transmission techniques. As part of its expanded partnership, Nortel is utilizing Waterloo's on-campus research facilities to allow students and faculty to test and develop next-generation wireless technologies.

As an affiliate sponsor of The University of Texas at Austin's Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG), Nortel has been working with the university on the development of advanced 4G mobile broadband technologies, including MIMO-OFDM. MIMO and related advanced antenna technologies will help improve the spectral efficiency, network coverage and capacity of cellular base stations. This empowers service providers to deliver higher speed data applications including mobile video, gaming and other high-speed data transfers. Nortel and UT also have plans to work on advanced multi-user MIMO technologies and relay links to extend the coverage of cellular base stations. The goal is to enable a "true broadband" 4G experience everywhere by blanketing an area with small, relay access nodes, rather than costly base stations, to ensure high-speed, high-bandwidth capabilities.