Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies, with 273,2 million mobile customers, 24,8 million fixed-network lines, and 22,5 million broadband lines in Europe and the US (Dez. 2025). Developing from a classic telephone company into a software company that sells telecommunications services, Deutsche Telekom is on its way to become the Leading Digital Telco.

T-Labs is the Research & Development department of Deutsche Telekom, dedicated to exploring disruptive trends and establishing technology leadership to create valuable business opportunities for Deutsche Telekom and its customers.

Co-creation is at the core of our mission: we collaborate with academic institutions on research and run incubation programs with startups, developers, and strategic partners worldwide. We currently focus on future network technologies, including AI Telco, Network Capabilities, Network Technologies, and Compute & Optics.

Contact: Dr. Heiko Lehmann

BISDN – we whitebox networks.

Born in Berlin in 2012, we set out to bring the power of software-defined networking to the world of telecommunication. It took a lot of time and effort to drive this small revolution: meeting the telco industry’s high standards for reliability, precision, and predictability has always required tailored development and deep technical rigor. Over the years, we have created the perfect blend of experienced engineers, network innovators and young talents.

Today, BISDN turns multi-vendor switches into flexible, remote OLTs and moves network management to the cloud. With our open-source mindset, we help ISPs escape vendor lock-in, scale smarter, and customize networks to their specific needs.

Contact: Dr.-Ing. Hagen Woesner
E-Mail: info@bisdn.de

The Deutsche Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI; German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence) was founded in 1988 as a non-profit public-private partnership (PPP). DFKI is Germany’s leading industry-oriented research institution in the field of innovative software technologies based on artificial intelligence methods. Within the international scientific community, DFKI is regarded as one of the most important ‘centres of excellence’. Under the leadership of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans Dieter Schotten, the Intelligent Networks research group in Kaiserslautern is working on innovative concepts for the development and implementation of particularly sophisticated and future-proof solutions in the fields of communications, AI, security and resilience, with a particular focus on technologies for 5G/6G mobile communications, industrial communication and programmable infrastructures.

Contact: Franc Pouhela

The Hasso Plattner Institute contributes to the KIOps6G project through its research group on Internet Technologies and Softwarization. The group focuses on architectures and protocols for communication systems in general, with particular emphasis on approaches such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). These approaches are applied in areas including mobile networks, data center networking, and the Internet as a whole.
A current area of strong interest is the use of artificial intelligence to optimize communication systems, as well as the distributed and resource-efficient operation of AI within such networks—for both inference and training.
The research group conducts projects funded, among others, by the BMFTR and the DFG. Within KIOps6G, its primary responsibilities lie in the architecture and implementation of the KOI.

Contacts: Prof. Dr. Holger Karl, Leonard Paeleke

Infosim GmbH & Co. KG was founded in Würzburg in 2003 as a spin-off of the local university and is now an internationally active IT company. Its flagship product is StableNet®, a technology- and vendor-neutral software suite for automated network and service management. Its core competencies range from performance monitoring and the configuration of network elements to the monitoring of entire business processes. Infosim is active in standardization bodies such as the TM Forum and ETSI and has received multiple awards for successful proof-of-concept projects, including through the TM Forum Catalyst program. Our passion for knowledge is the driving force behind our continuous experimentation with new technologies and our numerous collaborations and research projects, ranging from partnerships with local universities to large-scale international projects.

Contact: Dr. David Hock

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is participating through the research group led by Prof. Martina Zitterbart (Institute of Telematics). The group contributes expertise in architectures, protocols, and algorithms for communication systems and is specifically focused within the project on the dynamic discovery of ML resources for training and inference. As “The University in the Helmholtz Association,” KIT brings together scientific excellence—from knowledge generation to application-oriented research—under one roof. With more than 10,000 employees and 22,800 students, KIT is also a member of the TU9 alliance.