Innovation comes when we attempt to take different challenges head-on…

18 years in the Telecom industry later, I still wonder what keeps my passion for technology and innovation going. I am happy to say that the answer lies in the last 7 years of my career which I have spent at STL. This is, after all, a place that believes in exceeding the boundaries of imagination and going beyond tomorrow to create a more connected world. And in these very words, I have found my challenge and meaning.

Presently, I am working as an Engineering Lead in the Access Solutions team. That means relishing the responsibility of developing the NOS & Edge platform solutions which enable the 5G and fixed broadband network use cases. I am truly passionate about what I do daily and do every bit of it with
full excitement.

What makes working here worthwhile is that the teams and people that I am part of reflect the same passion big time. I have always admired the energy, passion, vision, and go-for-it attitude of the management team. There is a big transformation happening in redefining the Telecom solutions for this Cloud-native era. The excitement from the fact that we all at STL are right in the thick of it is palpable!

Every day at STL brings something remarkably challenging, and at the same time, it’s a lot of fun. In fact, I am a big-time believer in the notion that innovation comes when we attempt to tackle challenges in solving different types of problems. Take for instance the challenge of designing more adaptive, flexible/agile, modular, and self-healed networks to meet the real-time and dynamic behavior of the applications. Any solution for the same should be interoperable and vendor agnostic so that it doesn’t have any limitation or dependency for adding new features or any enhancements.

We all know that applications that support ultra-low latency and high bandwidth are much in demand. For that, we need to deploy the Edge Computing nodes closer to the consumers and as per the economies of scale. Optical/carrier ethernet networking technologies also need to be pushed closer to Edge now which is predominantly used in aggregate and Core parts of networks.

We understood these problems and felt that there should be a vendor-independent way to control these optical edge devices from multiple vendors and its implementation should be done in a uniform manner. Many brainstorming sessions and iterations later, we were able to establish several innovative novel solutions to serve the 5 G and fixed access broadband use cases. And I can proudly say that a couple of our Patents on the same were granted in the US. One of them is our first 5G patent for Programmable Optical Access Solution and the other is called Programmable Flex Grid.

Such eureka moments, when our patent finally got a grant in the US and in real quick time, is what continues to define not just my stint but a lot of STLers’ careers here. So, what is the secret sauce to our success? Our shared excitement, passion towards the technology, and providing the best
efficient solution for the problem that drives us forever forward.

I would like to mention my colleague Vishnu here, who worked with me in defining some of the initial novel solutions. He is quite a dynamic, energetic person with sound knowledge of optical technologies. A huge shoutout to Dr. Badri, Chris Rice & Rajesh Gangadhar here, who showed confidence in me and gave me this wonderful opportunity.

I would also like to thank John Medamana (who is on STL Access Solutions Technical advisory board) for helping and guiding me in defining the technical strategy for the NOS. A note of appreciation for the IP team as well, who have always supported us in a great way with the smooth filing process and how they always come up with a detailed prior-art analysis of the invention.

I believe it has always been the infectious ‘never give up’ attitude of the workplace that has enabled STL to raise the bar. There are many more eureka moments to go here and this team will not rest until it has found them all.