Parthus technologies, the Irish wireless software company, has acquired the GSM communication and GPRS wireless division of US company, Frontier Design for an undisclosed sum.

Mr Brian Long, chief executive officer of Parthus, said: "This deal specifically delivers critical mobile Internet functionality for next generation mobile systems for our global customer base."

Parthus plans to license GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technology to its global customer base by the end of 2000 and to introduce an EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM evolution) platform by the middle of next year.

GPRS delivers data rates for wireless devices of 114 kbps, more than 10 times faster than GSM, while EDGE, an enhancement to GSM, is designed to deliver data at rates up to 384 kbps.