You want to find Ireland’s answer to Google or Facebook? You’re looking at it

The internet is slowing down, but Irish company Intune Networks has the solution to a global problem.

It's not quite the Victor Kiam story where the Remington shaver owner quipped: “I liked it so much I bought the company”, but Tim Fritzley’s story echoes this sentiment. Several years ago, the CEO of Intune Networks – an Irish company that could very soon be the driving force for the future of the internet globally – was the head of Microsoft’s TV division, with networks, internet entrepreneurs and Tier-1 telecom operators vying for his time.

Fritzley was cornered at a trade event by a group of earnest young Irish entrepreneurs who told him they could stop the internet from slowing down. Resignedly, he gave them two minutes.

“I asked them for some Tabasco sauce, I was ready to eat crow.” Within three years, Fritzley abandoned his high-flying career with the world’s biggest software company to join this little-known Irish start-up and relocated to Dublin.

Dublin-based Intune Networks, formed in 1999 by a group of ex-UCD photonics researchers, has developed a technology that can enable a single strand of fibre to move from carrying one signal from one operator to carrying data from 80 telecoms and TV companies all at once. It plans to manufacture and export this product and answers a problem that technology giants AT&T, IBM, Cisco and Bell Labs have been trying to solve for 30 years or more.

The fact is the internet is slowing down. While we all talk about getting faster bandwidth speeds, network operators are struggling to keep up. Every minute, 20 hours of new video are uploaded on YouTube, millions of people converse by sound and video via Skype and more than 300 million people worldwide share text, pictures, video and more on Facebook. All of this will contribute to a bandwidth bottleneck that will see network routers possibly burn out.

Read More

Farmleigh forum aims to create new ideas for recovery... Irish Times

A MAJOR economic forum aimed at generating new links and ideas to aid Ireland’s economic recovery is to take place this weekend.

The Global Irish Economic Forum, which gets under way at Farmleigh House in Dublin today, hopes to create strategic partnerships between the State, the global Irish community and those with business connections to Ireland.

Organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the three-day event will discuss how the economy can position itself for the upturn, innovation on the island and promoting Ireland. About 200 delegates are expected at the inaugural event.

With the Government focusing on developing Ireland’s “smart economy”, the opportunity to connect with potential partners is looking increasingly important.

Tim Fritzley of Intune networks is hoping that the event will help attract research funds into Ireland, by way of academic institutions and industry tie-ins, using Ireland and Intune’s Exemplar smart network, a fibre-optic-based network that can cope with large volumes of internet traffic as a “test bed” for innovative technology.

Mr Fritzley is speaking at the “Innovation Island” workshop tomorrow, which is focusing on green technology and ICT.

“The goal is to attract partnerships based on the Exemplar Network capabilities,” he says. “It will allow Ireland to be a leader in the development of new goods and services. This technology will be in Ireland years before other areas get it.”

The network could attract a variety of firms into Ireland, such as those who want to develop new web applications for the next-generation semantic web and those interested in testing new content distribution models.

Read More

Laying the foundations for Ireland's next-generation network rollout - Irish Independent

Can Ireland's telecoms leaders collaborate to construct the nation's fibre network of the future?

THERE is no getting away from it: Ireland's first broadband decade was far from being a smooth ride. Instead of speeding down the highways of the future, think of it more like driving a 1979 Ford Cortina with no suspension across a Donegal bog.

Only in the past few years has the speed of progress that's been needed occurred, bringing broadband penetration to over 1.2 million subscribers, moving Ireland from being a laggard and placing it slightly above average in the EU-15.

Continuing this progress and building fast fibre networks will be vital if the country is to bring the trade routes of tomorrow to towns in Ireland that will attract investment and where export-focused entrepreneurs can create local jobs.

The chairman of ComReg, John Doherty, agrees. "We are making progress on LLU. In markets like France where next-generation fibre services are available, LLU has been a precursor to building NGNs. The fact that BT and Vodafone are committed to rolling out more exchanges will mean there will be a footprint to make LLU more competitive."

Doherty also points out that if Ireland wants to see early deployment of services like Long Term Evolution (LTE) - that will mature 3G to a point where services like 50Mbps over mobile networks will be possible or Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification [DOCSIS] 3.0, which will see speeds of 120Mbps over cable - it will need to get its fibre NGN in order.

The country already has an abundance of State-owned fibre networks and ducting lying unused, waiting to be joined up to the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) in 96 towns.

Doherty is spearheading a Stakeholders Group to get all network infrastructure owners in Ireland to work together to build this future network, but also to compete on the network. The Government is also working to create an Exemplar Network with Intune Networks to make use of the State-owned fibre assets and join up the 96 fibre MANs.

Read More