EU project gives fibre network a boost
The Irish research facility Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork has demonstrated the most advanced fibre network on Earth, it was reported recently. This latest innovation is part of the PIEMAN ('Photonic integrated extended metro and access network') project, funded under the 'Information Society Technologies' (IST) Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 2.2 million. Commenting on the project, Irish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation Conor Lenihan told Tech Central: 'Cutting-edge projects such as PIEMAN are helping to drive the development of next-generation networks, which are key enablers of the future Smart Economy.' Mr Lenihan pointed out that Ireland requires a strong, reliable and dynamic communications network to make a Smart Economy possible. 'The exciting developments demonstrated at Tyndall National Institute confirm that we can have the critical mass of innovation to compete in the global telecommunications market,' the minister was quoted as saying. 'This project also clearly demonstrates the significant benefits accruing to Ireland and to Irish researchers from our involvement in Europe.' The Irish official noted how this development has direct relevance on European research programmes and can fuel the development of enterprise in Ireland. For his part, Professor Paul Townsend of the Photonics research centre at Tyndall said: 'High-speed optical fibre access networks are increasingly seen as the ultimate solution for supplying future broadband services to residential and business customers. In the PIEMAN project, we have pushed the boundaries of access network design to create a new type of large-scale, high-speed network that offers significant advantages compared to existing schemes.' According to Professor Townsend, the research team is considering increasing the network span from the current 20 kilometres (km) to as much as 100 km. 'The new scheme eliminates the need for many of the electronic switches and repeaters used in current networks. Consequently, these new networks would potentially be much simpler and easier to manage with lower equipment and operational costs.' Chris Clark, the chief executive of BT Ireland, a subsidiary of BT Group in the UK, said this latest network is able to go beyond the fibre access networks that are currently on the market. 'As well as extended span, the scheme increases both the number of users and the available bandwidths by as much as a factor of 10, compared to existing solutions,' Mr Clark was quoted as saying. 'It also employs multiple colours of light to allow sharing of optical fibre and components across many sub-networks so that in total more than 16,000 customers can be supported from a single hub. This potentially enables significant network simplification and cost reduction to be achieved.' The PIEMAN partners said that once launched on the market, the technology developed would give European consumers and companies cost-effective access to instant symmetrical bandwidth on demand. European competitiveness in the technology of broadband communications would also be maintained, according to the researchers. Besides University College Cork, PIEMAN partners included the BT Group (coordinator), Alcatel-Lucent Deutschland AG in Germany, Siemens Networks GmbH in Germany, Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum vzw (IMEC) in Belgium, and The Centre for Integrated Photonics Ltd in the UK.
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Ireland