Tellabs Works With South Africans

NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Tellabs International today announced it is working in collaboration with its South African partner, Grintek Telecom, a leading integrator and provider of ICT and telecommunications solutions in South Africa, to support the Telkom Centres of Excellence (COE) programme in South Africa. Launched in 1997, the Telkom COE programme is a collaboration between Telkom SA Limited, the telecommunications industry and the South African government. The programme aims to promote research in communication technology and allied social sciences as well as providing facilities to encourage young scientists and engineers to pursue their interests in South Africa. "A significant benefit of the COE programme is skills retention. Many talented post-graduate students are attracted to opportunities overseas. The COE programme enables them to realise that there are opportunities for them within telecoms in South Africa. It is also expanding local telecommunications and information technology skills, yielding substantial benefits for the universities and helping Telkom to solve technical problems and cut costs," said Bill Burns, vice president of Tellabs EMEA. At a recent COE promotional day, Antti Kankunnen, who is chief technical officer of Tellabs International and acts as an industry mentor for COE, gave a speech on the current narrowband communications infrastructure and how it will be replaced with a new broadband ICT infrastructure over the next ten years. Antti commented, "I had the opportunity to observe the quality of the COE research and academics at the recent Southern African Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC) in the Drakensberg. I was extremely impressed and I am proud to support the research." Tellabs partners with Telkom SA Limited, Grintek Telecom, Molapo Technology and THRIP in the sponsorship of the Telkom Centre of Excellence in Electronic Commerce at the University of Fort Hare. Tellabs Inc.