Bringing innovation to the nation

I could be on top of an Irish mountain in the driving snow and rain mending an antenna, or doing a "diagnostic" on some piece of equipment in any part of the country.

It's not always enjoyable, but we are fully kitted out to deal with the elements and I've never really been keen on being an office worker.

Chorus, the company I work for, is building its broadband network, which provides digital television, Internet and telephone services to customers across the country, so we often work on several different sites each week.

Most of my work takes me out of the office and I always travel with at least one laptop computer from which I can e-mail the network operations centre back in Limerick.

Computers are very important for broadcast engineers. Many of our testing and maintenance procedures are done by plugging a laptop into a bit of "kit" and reconfiguring pieces of equipment.

The technology is changing so fast and there are so many new abbreviations and technical terms created in the industry that we have to keep going on courses to brush up. This week, I am travelling to Milan to do a course on high-capacity data networks. In fact, travelling abroad is quite common among broadcast engineers and other engineering disciplines.

I started out working as an audio-visual engineer in theatres and conference halls. At first, I worked in Britain, then I worked on projects in Norway, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Ireland. I only moved back into broadcasting to work on digital networks in the past two years

Everything now is moving towards the digital. This really means that everything is broken down into 1's and 0's and signals can be transferred over telephone, the Internet and digital television.

I've been in Ireland for seven years now and at the moment there is no shortage of work for engineers skilled in digital broadcasting. Demand has increased recently as the mobile company Meteor plans to launch its service.

My typical day starts at about 9 a.m. when I arrive at the office, check my e-mails and make sure everything is okay. Normally, I would go to a site to do some tests, keeping in communication with a guy back in the office or at the network management centre.

Sometimes I am on call at the weekends or at night in case something goes wrong with the network. Then I would get a call and have to go out to fix the problem.

It may not seem the most glamorous lifestyle, but I have plenty of friends in television and radio who say they don't even like their jobs. My work is very interesting. There is always something new happening and the technology changes so fast.

In conversation with Jamie Smyth