A FLEDGLING Irish telecoms firm is targeting a turnover of "hundreds of millions" within three years after securing €22m from a Dermot Desmond-led group of private equity investors.
Founded in 1999, Dublin-based Intune Networks is advancing a new technology to enable telecoms networks to work more efficiently.
The Irish Government has already asked the firm to build the Exemplar Smart Network here, marking the first step in the country's "next generation" communications systems.
Intune boss Tim Fritzley yesterday said the Irish deal was the "first step" but was "very small" since it only involved supporting a network that would be a "test bed for researchers".
"The big ones are the national telecoms carriers," he said. "We'll do a couple of small deals there in 2009 and then the big ones will start to happen in early 2010."
Ambitious
The big deals in 2010 will drive Intune's turnover to "small millions", all sourced in Europe, Mr Fritzley said. In 2011 the company will branch out to North America and in 2012 Asia will come onto the radar and sales will shoot to "hundreds of millions".
The ambitious forecasts came as financier Mr Desmond praised Intune's technology as something "that will change the way that telecommunications services are delivered".
Mr Fritzley said it was a "huge thing" to have gotten someone of Mr Desmond's business calibre involved, adding that the IFSC founder "is very aware of what we're doing and really understands it".
Intune's business plan predicts break-even for 2011, and the firm has already begun staffing up. "We had 120, we've added another 15 or 20 in the last few weeks, and we'll probably add another 25 by the end of the year," Mr Fritzley said. "Then we'll push past the 200 mark in 2010 depending on the technology's rollout".
Mr Fritzley said he was confident of growth because the efficiencies of Intune's technology become even more important as telecoms networks advance to next-generation wireless technologies.
Read More