This week, the Government unveiled its 'Technology Actions to Support the Smart Economy', which includes a plan to create an Exemplar Network that will dovetail with its plans to create a one-stop-shop to tie all these stranded assets together and connect them to the MANs.
The decision to build an Exemplar Network will result in 350 new jobs being created at Dublin and Belfast-based tech firm Intune Networks.
Intune Networks has developed the world's first programmable fibre optic platform, which is critical to building an Exemplar Smart Network. This new technology will help to bring the internet to the next level, allowing high-quality, on-demand and interactive services.
Developing this technology has the potential to position Ireland for a wave of opportunities based on the future of the internet. Intune Network's technology, which effectively uses different colours of light to prioritise web traffic to ensure it arrives at its destination faster, has already elicited the interest of City of London traders. Meanwhile, the Government will present the technology before the EU Parliament and the World Economic Forum.
For once, Ireland has a chance to be out in front of the world in terms of digital technology, says Tim Fritzley, CEO, Intune Networks. "This is a very bold plan. We are hard at work preparing ourselves to begin with the first stage of the network in the autumn and we expect to have most of the network operational by the end of 2010."
Fritzley says that Intune's technology puts web services into the switching network, enabling what he calls semantic web for switching, or liquid bandwidth.
"Intune Networks has come up with a sophisticated colour coding fibre optic system," explains Communications Minister, Eamon Ryan TD.
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