A research group at the Waterford Institute of Technology, TSSG is soon to become as well known in Ireland as it is throughout Europe, writes Karlin Lillington.

A turnover of €10 million, 50 employees, a leadership role on numerous European telecommunications and information technology projects, partnerships with some of the biggest names in the business: a nice success story for any Irish company.

Except in this case, the 'company' is the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG), a research group at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT).If the name draws a blank, even TSSG's director, Dr Willie Donnelly, readily admits that you're not alone.

"TSSG is a name well known in Europe but not so well known in Ireland," he says. "But that's beginning to change."

Set up in 1997, TSSG was established by Dr Donnelly, who came into academia from industry, and two WIT colleagues, Mr Eamonn De Leastar and Mr Mícheál Ó Foghlú.

"I could see there was this convergence happening between the telecommunications industry and the information technology industry," Dr Donnelly says.

From a job in the early 1990s with Broadcom Eireann Research - a division of what was then Telecom Éireann - and other experience within the telecommunications industry, he felt there was an opportunity to do interesting work around a convergence that the telecoms industry was mostly ignoring - especially the emergence of the internet.

"I can tell you, the telecoms industry really could not see the potential of what they saw as this academic network [the internet]," he says with some amusement. "But the arrival of the internet changed fundamentally the way people use communications, and communications networks." Drawing down framework funds from the European Union, as well as some funding from Enterprise Ireland and the Higher Education Authority (HEA), TSSG has found a healthy role in participating in - and typically, leading -European projects to bring telecoms and IT closer together.

That's placed it on some cutting edge research into 3G networks, mobile broadband services and virtual private networks. The impetus for such research is simple: converged telecoms is both an area of rapid growth and development in IT, and also, as the telecommunications operators increasingly realise, the corner from which the operators will realise their revenue as profits decline from traditional telephony services.

Nonetheless, the telecoms industry has been extremely cautious in embracing a service-drivenmodel for its future. The reasons lie in the way in which telecoms networks have traditionally been structured and controlled, says Dr Donnelly.

Telecommunications networks have intelligence embedded in the network , intelligence that is owned by the operators. The management tools, hardware and software in the network - the intelligence - is controlled by the telecommunications companies themselves.

By contrast, the intelligence in the internet is not within the network itself but out at the edges, on the servers and home computers that manage the applications, services and content that is distributed via the net, he says. The network itself is not controlled by anybody.

As the internet merges more and more into daily life - particularly overlapping with mobile devices - operators need to open their networks to internet-based services and service providers.

The key, and a central aspect of the research "themes" pursued by TSSG, is to find ways of letting services run over the operator networkswithout having full access to the networks, says Dr Donnelly.

How do such goals translate into applications and services? Working with Telefónica in Spain, TSSG has created software that enables someone to remotely access a specially built "smart home" in Madrid. "It's a demo that shows that when travelling, you can log in and manage your home - maybe turn on the VCR and tape an old film, open and close the blinds. But the serious science underneath is a management system under the network that will allow service providers to use the network in a secure and safe way," he says.

Another related project is the creation of software "building blocks" for creating secure mobile services."Using the building blocks, service providers can harvest the functionality of the network, but the network operators can be assured that these services can be integrated securely into the network without giving the service providers free access."

A TSSG EU project is working on ways of ensuring interoperability between3G and existing GPRS (2.5G) mobile networks and services.The group has used an internet dating service as an example of how a traveller across Europe might want a service to continue between operators .

If you are belong to such a service in London but are spending a week in Berlin, you might want to make use of it while in Berlin. A similar German-run dating service could partner to provide such information, he says, noting that operators will also have to deal with the tricky question of managing and sharing customer information for such services.

Dr Donnelly says one of TSSG's most ambitious projects is to set up a really large 3G network, ranging across continents,through a project called Creation. Along with partners on the project, it is waiting for word on funding from the EU. If approved, the project would be the biggest of its kind.

Back in the Republic, TSSG has begun to develop a PhD programme at WIT, with 15 graduates so far. TSSG has also drawn support from Science Foundation Ireland, receiving €1 million last year to bring in international research expertise to Waterford and help develop its bid to becomeone of SFI's Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET). CSET locations are a central element of SFI's national research development programme; a decision should come shortly.

As for the future? "We'd like to expand our industry/academic partnerships in Ireland," says Dr Donnelly. "All our links are in Europe. What we want to do now is to help increase research and development opportunities for Irish industry."

Historically, the State has been poor at creating such linkages. "All the \ researchers in Ireland would fit into one small division of MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\]."

TSSG shows how positive a development for academia such links can be: it is a self-funded entity within WIT. Not bad for an operation that started as three people,less than seven years ago.