To keep its promise of continuing innovation, Embarq opened its new multimillion-dollar technology center last week, dedicating it to the memory of two former long-time lab employees, Bob Pohlabel and Pete Gaughan.

“They are remembered for their years of service, but they were also top employees who set our standards for what we put in the network,” said Denny Petrie, director of network solutions development at Embarq.

The new Embarq Technology Center will test not only what goes into the 18-state network, but what is already in the network to find ways of getting more value out of it, Petrie said. The 13,500 square-foot facility will focus on testing equipment and application interoperability as well as interoperability with back office systems. It also will test customer premises equipment that Embarq’s business customers install in their networks.

Petrie said that when Embarq was planning its separation from Sprint, it knew it had to extend the capabilities of the lab environment. “The new center has access to the outside public network and is no longer an isolated test environment,” he said. “We can put a new service in the lab and roll it out to a subset of our customers and make better use of market trials. That would have been unheard of in the old lab days.”

While Embarq leaves feature functionality testing of new gear to the vendors, it will use the new lab to “focus on making that equipment do something usable for out customers,” Petrie said. “As we go to an IP infrastructure, it will be critical to make sure new applications work over the network infrastructure and work with each other.”