Tech firm tuned in to network revolution

Dublin company Intune Networks is at the forefront of developing technologies that could transform the telecoms industry

A WORLD first was achieved in a quiet corner of Co Kerry last week, with the first demonstration of new technology that could revolutionise the telecoms industry. While Northern Irish band Snow Patrol held an intimate show at St James’s Church in the centre of Dingle as part of the Other Voices series, the concert was transmitted to high-definition screens across the road in Benners Hotel using a fibre-optic network.

The technology was formulated by Dublin- based telecoms equipment supplier Intune Networks, which has been tasked with setting up the Exemplar network, a new Government-backed smart network that will be built across the State.

Founded in 1999 by UCD graduates John Dunne and Tom Farrell, Intune Networks, which is based in Park West in Dublin, has developed a potential way of solving one of the biggest problems facing the development of next-generation fibre-optic communications networks: inefficient use of capacity.

The company, which recently closed a €22 million funding round, counts financier Dermot Desmond and venture-capital firm Kernel Capital among its investors.

It has developed a technology known as optical packet switch and transport (OPST). Current fibre-optic networks are underutilised, employing only a fraction of the capacity available because they send data as a single colour of light. Using OPST allows more traffic to be sent over existing fibre-optic networks using different coloured lights.

The live, high-definition transmission of the concert was used to demonstrate the company’s latest technology, a distributed telecoms switch based on optical burst switching. Using this equipment, providers could ensure mass, live, simultaneous content downloads with a guaranteed level of quality.

Users could also connect to local WiFi hotspots with a laptop or mobile device, such as an iPhone, to view the transmission.

It has taken $50 million (€33.9 million) and 10 years of development to come up with the switches that were used to create the local area network in Dingle.

The transmission of the Snow Patrol concert demonstrated how the laser technology could be used to provide simultaneous broadcasts to different areas. “Some of the network arrives in here, and we’re splitting it up and putting it on to the TV screens. Some of the video is going out to the lobby area and the bar where there are four high-def TVs,” says Dunne, speaking in the hotel in Dingle. “You have one laser sending all these signals. What it’s doing is it’s changing colours; it’s bursting one colour to this room, one colour outside, one upstairs. We’re chopping up the video.

“The technology is designed not to drop any packets [units of data]. This is one of the key inventions that the company came up with. Normally, when you send a packet over the internet, if it doesn’t arrive for some reason, a signal sends instructions to send it again.

“With our system, the packet can be chopped up, so if you only manage to send half the packet, it still gets across the network. Then you send the rest of the packet on the next available slot or burst. By creating an asynchronous access to all the bandwidth on the system, you’re able to do quality of experience.”

While the internet has become the global tool of choice for streaming video from remote locations, Intune’s technology vastly improves the possibilities. Current internet infrastructure is inherently unsuitable for such high-quality media broadcasts.

“There is no way the internet could deliver this,” says Dunne. “The internet has an unknown number of switches that your signal would have to go through. Any sort of application that involves live multimedia streaming or interactivity can’t be delivered over the internet. The internet is a fantastic global community, but as a consequence of it being a global community, you have to accept that the quality won’t be there. This is purely a local area network that would work, for example, in the region of Leinster.”

The potential for the technology is vast, opening up opportunities for everyone from local communities to budding TV moguls.

“This network will allow you to set up your own TV station effectively. If you had a gig or a local sports event, you could use the laser to pay for only a small subset of the bandwidth, and it can be monetised. It changes the economics of how this thing works,” says Dunne.

“Because the laser can tune and change, we’ve built a software interface into the network itself. You could go home and in a few minutes set up your own TV station. People could subscribe to it all over Ireland. You could blog over a live high-definition network. It could totally change how communities work because you’ve added video to communities, at the same quality as if you’re sitting next to them in the room.”

The technology can be reprogrammed easily according to the services that are required. It also uses less energy, meaning it has a lower carbon footprint than other internet technologies and fits in with the Government’s strategy for a green economy.

Developing the technology in Ireland will be beneficial to the local economy, with the Exemplar network expected to create up to 5,000 jobs in the future. Intune employs 120 staff in Dublin and Belfast; the development of the Exemplar network is expected to add an extra 350 jobs to the company.

Intune hopes Ireland will become a test bed for the technologies and will be seen as a centre of excellence, putting the State at the forefront of new developments.

The Government is firmly behind the development of the new technology. “Ireland is going to concentrate on a few areas. Optical burst switching is one where we’re leading the world,” says Barry McSweeney, director of the National Knowledge Society Strategy. “The Government intends to invest in this.”

The basic infrastructure for Intune’s technology is already in place, with 400,000 fibre rings installed in cities across Europe and North America. They are costly to install, with fixed systems that are often underutilised.

Dunne predicts that there will be a major shift in the ownership of networks in Ireland in the future. A number of operators exist here, each with their own infrastructure – a situation Dunne believes is unsustainable.

“With our system, many different network operators could use the same infrastructure. Everyone can use the bit of the network they need. What we’ve done is effectively virtualised the use of the infrastructure,” he says.

“The world can’t support all of these vendors. What we’re saying is that one of them will become a virtual operator. They’ll run the physical network and some of the others will just sit on top. They’ll all compete, not on quality, but on the content.”

Dunne predicts that eventually there will be a business model whereby operators compete based on the services they offer, such as cloud computing, or an exclusive entertainment deal they have agreed – a far cry from today’s environment where operators get paid simply for providing internet access.