Data are presented that demonstrate the continuous wave room-temperature transverse-electric field (TE) visible-spectrum (645 nm) heterostructure laser operation of single-layer compressively strained 3.75 monolayer equivalent InP quantum dots (QDs) coupled to 60 Angstrom wide tensile-strained In0.46Ga0.54P quantum wells (QWs). The simple stripe geometry (200 mumx4 mum) InP QD+InGaP QW heterostructure laser is capable of high performance despite the coupling of two competing recombination systems. The InP QD+InGaP QW laser exhibits low threshold (similar to31 mA), high quantum efficiency (72%, similar to1.38 mW/mA), a relatively high characteristic temperature T-0 of 69 K, and a shift in wavelength at temperature of 0.19 nm/degreesC. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.