Cork chips to speed up access to rural broadband and save money

High-speed communications:Chips with everything is the order of the day when it comes to broadband communications, given a researcher at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork seems to have come up with the ultimate recipe, a chip that can help deliver high-speed communications while saving money, too.

Dr Peter Ossieur is a staff researcher in the Photonic Systems Group at Tyndall. Last week the institute announced he had delivered a “first-of- its-kind” chip. It should help cut costs by simplifying the delivery of broadband, particularly in a rural context.

The move is on to extend Ireland’s fibre optic network but costs are high. A major impediment is the fact that the initial signal can’t travel much more than 20km before it begins to degrade.

It has to be routed into a high cost digital exchange to be reconstructed then sent on its way for another 20km before repeating the exercise.

Ossieur’s chip changes all that. It is able to recover a signal and renew it over much longer distances.

“This increases the reach up to 100km and is important for a number of reasons,” he says. For one it means that far fewer intermediate exchanges are needed as a broadband signal travels down the line.

This saves money by reducing the amount of expensive switching equipment needed, which in turn means less electricity.

It also makes it far more economic to push broadband out into rural settings.

It took almost two years to develop but patents are being applied for and discussions are already under way with both multinationals and indigenous Irish firms to commercialise the chip, says Ossieur.