Press release

ESB Novus Modus announces €3m investment in Intune Networks

ESB Novus Modus, the cleantech and renewable energy fund, has invested €3 million in Intune Networks, the Dublin-based developer of high-performance laser technology for the telecoms industry. The investment adds to Intune’s recent €22m funding round which will be used to complete the development and commercialisation of its high performance optical data switch technology.

Intune’s patented fast tuneable laser technology solves the costly performance bottleneck problems facing all major mobile telecoms carriers as existing network architectures struggle to deal with huge increases in data traffic.

Mobile traffic is forecast to grow by a factor of ten in less than five years with video consuming more than 50% of new bandwidth. The problem is exacerbated by the recent proliferation of high powered mobile devices such as smart phones and netbooks which produce increasingly unpredictable data traffic patterns. Intune’s innovative solution uses high speed laser tuning technology to colour code address locations, greatly reducing the processing requirement.

The technology doubles performance at half of the cost and halves the power consumption. Intune’s breakthrough solution also increases the potential utilisation of existing metro fibre networks from below 10% to above 80%. Intune is currently building the platform for the Irish Government’s recently announced €5m Exemplar Network which is an open test bed site for companies to trial high speed network applications.

Novus Modus’ John McKiernan - appointed as a director of Intune Networks - said: “Intune Networks’ revolutionary technology has the potential to transform the way that carriers operate their metro networks, solving bandwidth problems at the same time as halving their energy consumption. We are delighted to be backing such an excellent management team and a company founded by Irish engineers with enormous global prospects.”

Intune Networks CEO, Tim Fritzley, said: “We’re very happy that ESB Novus Modus has decided to invest in us, adding another top-flight institution to our list of shareholders. Major telecommunications carriers all over the world face increasing stresses on their networks as the uptake of high powered mobile devices continues to drive mobile traffic. Our product solves this problem without the installation of additional fibre optics, and is both cost-efficient and less energy intensive.”

Ends

 

Additional Information:

Novus Modus (www.novusmodus.com)
Novus Modus LLP is the investment adviser to ESB Novus Modus LP, a €200m cleantech and renewables fund established in 2009 by ESB a leading national utility with an 80 year operating history. ESB plans to halve its carbon footprint within 10 years and become carbon neutral by 2035. The fund’s aim is to provide capital, support and knowledge to companies, projects and management teams in the clean energy and energy efficiency sectors. The fund is supported by ESB’s wealth of technical knowledge, engineering skills and commercial experience.

Existing investments include Nualight - the Irish supplier of energy efficient lighting systems for retailers, and Airvolution – the developer of UK onshore wind farms.

Intune Networks (www.intunenetworks.com)
Intune Networks was founded in Dublin in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell, both UCD graduates who were researching laser technology in European funded programmes. Over the next 10 years, Intune developed and refined its technology to solve a critical problem in the optical networking sector and this solution is now being brought to market as a family of telecom switch products. Along the way, Intune supplied expertise and technology to many European and US research programmes building a customer base of the world’s leading academic and commercial research groups. Now, Intune is focussed on the telecoms equipment market where the next generation of digital service requirements such as quality of experience and high bandwidths are creating a new global opportunity. Intune currently employs 128 people and has design centres in Dublin and Belfast. The main institutional investors include ESB Novus Modus, Balderton Capital, Spark Capital, Amadeus, Kernel Capital, Dermot Desmond, Enterprise Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland.

The Exemplar Network:
Intune Networks was named to lead the Government’s programme to build Ireland’s Exemplar Communications Network in July 2009 using its programmable fibre optical packet switching platform which is critical to building an Exemplar Smart Network. Developing this technology has the potential to position Ireland for a wave of opportunities based on the future of the Internet that up to now have been considered an area of expertise of regions like Silicon Valley in the US and several Far Eastern countries who are pushing the boundaries of consumer broadband networks. The network will be the first step in creating a next generation smart and green communications infrastructure for Ireland. The decision to develop the network using the Intune Network’s technological approach was announced by Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan at the publication of ‘Technology Actions to Support the Smart Economy’ strategy document.

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