Creativity - IDA Ireland

» DIGITAL WORLD
‘It makes you proud
when you think of
the contribution
the Irish team is
making in the
development of this
game-changing
technology’
TO WALK THROUGH ALCATEL-LUCENT/BELL LABS’
BLANCHARDSTOWN OPERATIONS IS TO GET AN
APPRECIATION OF THE WHIRLWIND HISTORY OF
TELECOMS OVER THE PAST 150 YEARS.
Ensconced among hi-tech research labs and state-of-the-art
facilities is a little corner where the very equipment responsible
for the telecoms and internet revolution sits. For visitors,
it’s a mind-blowing experience to see the antenna responsible
for the world’s first transatlantic phone call, the first cinema
projector with sound, replicas of the world’s first telecoms
satellites, the earliest telegraph machines and sections of the
world’s first transatlantic fibre optic cable.
It is thus fitting that yards away young engineers are spearheading
the development of a new technology with an addressable
market of €100bn over the next seven years, which
is little more than the size of a Rubik’s Cube. The technology,
incidentally, could be a game changer for humanity.
WHAT IS LIGHTRADIO?
Known as lightRadio, the tiny new technology will revolutionise
base stations and mobile masts, effectively reducing
their carbon footprint by 50pc, leading to more bandwidth per
person and to universal broadband coverage.
LightRadio represents a new approach to base-station technology
and shrinks today’s clutter of antennas serving 2G, 3G
and LTE (4G) systems into a single, powerful Bell Labs-pioneered
antenna that can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings
or anywhere else there is power and a broadband
connection.
Underlining the oncoming gridlock in mobile communications,
Bell Labs predicts there will be more than 21.6 billion
downloads of mobile apps by 2013. By 2015, the world will experience
18 times more smartphone devices and 30pc more
wireless data traffic. There will be 32 times greater smartphone
usage per urban kilometre.
As well as the obvious business opportunity for the mobile
industry and for firms to engage in e-commerce and new forms
of content delivery, the real benefit will be a humanitarian one
because it will address the digital divide in the world.
Today, only 59pc of the world’s population use mobile
phones. That means nearly three billion people are excluded
from the mobile community. A 10pc increase in mobile pene-
54 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 2 Spring/Summer 2011