ESB fund invests in laser technology firm

ESB Novusmodus, the cleantech and renewable energy fund, has invested €3m in Intune Networks, the Dublin-based developer of 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.

The technology doubles performance at half of the cost and halves the power consumption.

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.

Novusmodus’ John McKiernan - appointed as a director of Intune Networks - said: "We are delighted to be backing such an excellent management team and a company founded by Irish engineers with enormous global prospects."

Novusmodus LLP is the investment adviser to ESB Novusmodus LP, a €200m cleantech and renewables fund established in 2009 by the ESB.

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 technical knowledge, engineering skills and commercial experience.