There is an argument to be made that industrial R&D these days is more about the D and less about the R than it once was but Bell Labs was always sui generis--and a creature of AT&T's telephone monopoly (which was hardly an unalloyed good). But the world is also a lot different than in Bell Labs' heyday. I'd be genuinely curious to hear about what areas or types of important research that would once have been done aren't being done today in the absence of a true Bell Labs equivalent.