Bell Labs To Create Jobs In Ireland

Bell Labs, the research division of Alcatel-Lucent, announced it plans to create more than 70 high-caliber technology positions over the next five years in Ireland. The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan unveiled on Feb. 3 an expansion program of Bell Labs at its Blanchardstown facility in Dublin. The expansion aims to support Bell Labs' contribution to the Green Touch Initiative, a global consortium whose goal is to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1000 times more energy efficient than they are today. The 1000-fold efficiency target is based on research from Bell Labs that determined that today's information and communication technology (ICT) networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient then they are today. This conclusion comes from a Bell Labs' analysis of the fundamental properties of ICT networks and technologies (optical, wireless, electronics, processing, routing, and architecture) and studying their physical limits by applying established formulas such as Shannon's Law. The Green Touch Initiative plans to deliver a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components required to realize this improvement, within five years. Members include service providers, academic research labs, government and non-profit research institutions and industrial labs. Bell Labs' expansion program is backed by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Agency).