The Government has announced details of a €24m investment in telecommunications research.
The investment will fund the work of 76 scientists at the Centre for Telecommunications Research, based at Trinity College in Dublin.
The centre also has researchers based at NUI Maynooth, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin City University, University College Cork and the Tyndall National Institute, as well as University of Limerick.
Almost €20m of the money will be provided by the Government through Science Foundation Ireland, with the rest coming from industry partners who include Alcatel-Lucent, Eircom, Meteor and Bell Labs Ireland.
The investment will fund the work of the Centre for Telecommunications Research for a five-year term up to 2016. The centre specialises in designing wireless and optical networks.
The Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock, said demands on the country's communication networks increase daily.
He said the Centre for Telecommunications Research had been at the forefront of telecommunications network design for the past seven years and the country's communications networks had to be able to keep pace with increasing demands.
