There is increasing interest in low power optoelectronics including ultralow threshold semiconductor lasers for use in optical interconnect applications. The oxide-confined vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) is a potential candidate for such applications because of the promising device results which have been demonstrated to date. At the University of Texas we have focused on minimizing optical loss from the lasing mode by lateral index confinement and high contrast mirrors. This talk will overview our device structures, the selective oxidation processing and low threshold quantum well VCSEL results. The low loss VCSL cavity may be especially important in realizing 1.3µm VCSELs grown on a GaAs substrate using an InAs/GaAs QD active region as the QDs have limited gain at this long wavelength. To date, we have achieved a 1.15µm GaAs-based VCSEL using the InAs/GaAs QDs. We will also discuss very recent data characterizing ultranarrow electroluminescence spectra from a large ensemble of quantum dots at very low current densities.