The University of Houston College of Technology AT&T Laboratory (UH AT&T Lab) was created in November 2006 thanks to a grant from Southwestern Bell Communications (SBC), now AT&T. The mission of the UH AT&T Lab has been to serve as a technological hub for research, training, education, and community outreach. To accomplish its goals, the University of Houston College of Technology in collaboration with AT&T and other industrial partners such as Fujitsu Communications, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, EMC, VMWare, and others have built a state-of-the-art training center and an advanced campus-wide research and education telecommunications network (UH COT NET).

The training center, with its workstations, conference area, and telecommunications room, is used for a variety of training and educational activities. Seminar and lecture series, technical training courses, technical certification workshops, videoconferences, and student educational activities are some of the events organized in the Lab. The telecommunications room in the Lab serves as the hub that facilitates communication and provides access to devices used in research and education initiatives within and outside the University.

The UH COT NET is a campus wide high-speed network that connects the Lab and four other UH research laboratories to international and regional telecommunications networks such as the AT&T backbone through its U-Verse connection, the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), Internet2 IP and ION networks, and Europe’s GEANT2. Through this connectivity, Engineering Technology faculty and students engage in research projects and undergraduate and graduate students learn by working in real-life scenarios and using modern network equipment. In addition, students can access the UH COT NET remotely to perform a variety of projects.