Telstra Research Laboratories (TRL) was a leading telecommunication

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

s research and development centre in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 up until its closure in January 2006. Shortly before its closure it employed several hundred people including engineers, scientists, psychologists and other technical staff spread over several locations including Melbourne, Sydney and Launceston (Tasmania).

The closure of TRL, with retrenchment of about 90% of its staff, was part of a broader restructure of Telstra's Network and Technology group following the announcement in November 2005 of the outcome of a strategic review led by new CEO Sol Trujillo. The new operating model places more emphasis on the reliance on key vendor partners, rather than the traditional in-house expertise that TRL provided to assist Telstra in being an intelligent purchaser of equipment and systems.

Telstra

Telstra

Telstra Corporation Limited is an Australian telecommunications and media company, building and operating telecommunications networks and marketing voice, mobile, internet access and pay television products and services....

 is Australia's dominant telecommunications carrier.

History

TRL was originally established as the Research Laboratories of the Postmaster-General's Department

Postmaster-General's Department

The Postmaster-General's Department was created at Federation in 1901 to control all postal services within Australia. Its minister was the Postmaster-General. In mid-1975 it was disaggregated into the Australian Telecommunications Commission and the Australian Postal Commission...

 in 1923. The Research Laboratories continued as PMG became Telecom and later became Telstra, and was responsible for the development of several key technologies. Notable achievements included a part in the development of radar for WW2, the first fax service in Australia, the first public TV broadcast in Australia, developed termite-resistant cabling, assisted with the development of the bionic ear and the cochlear ear implant

Cochlear implant

A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing...

, developed the optical fibre cold clamp, built the first system to route calls to a single number to destination depending on location (One3), and even demonstrated a working Internet fridge.

External links

• http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/ Unofficial TRL history and Chronicles of Trel