Engineers at AT&T Labs demonstrated dozens of emerging communications technologies at an event in New York Monday. The company also defended its 3G network in light of reception problems and dropped calls involving Apple.'s iPhone 3G.

"That's a matter for Apple," AT&T CTO John Donovan said in comments to reporters when asked if AT&T has felt much customer fallout with reports on 3G reception. Apple has issued software updates to fix the problem, which Donovan called part of a "standard process."

But Donovan also said that being the exclusive iPhone carrier in the U.S. has benefited AT&T, which offers a 3G network used not only by the iPhone but by more than 50 wireless devices from a variety of manufacturers.

"The fallout [of the iPhone connection problems] has been positive," he said. "The attention to our 3G network has been good for us."

Donovan made the brief comment to reporters at the end of a day of demonstrations of emerging technologies, some that could become products or services.

Speech recognition technologies

The company showed more than 25 demonstrations of speech recognition technology on TVs, PCs and wireless devices using AT&T's "Watson" speech engine software. Also shown were interactive IPTV, 3D video (without glasses) and a demonstration of how AT&T engineers are using Second Life, a virtual online world, to help test rogue attacks on AT&T products.

Videoconferencing technology for home-based users and higher quality videoconferencing technology for businesses were also shown, although no formal plans for rolling out such services were given. The company also touted new telemedicine applications, demonstrating how a patient could have his body temperature or weight sent from his home to a doctor's office via wireless Zigbee technology that connected to a router and then to a cellular network.

Donovan, who assumed his role on April 1, said the purpose of the event was to show the continuing technology prowess of AT&T Labs, which he called "the world's best." Because of the mergers of companies that created AT&T Inc. and other industry consolidations, the work of thousands of AT&T Labs scientists and engineers hasn't been as public as it was years ago, he said.

"Working here has been humbling," he said, noting that his own background was more focused on management than engineering.

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