Venture capitalists boosted their second-quarter investments in Silicon Valley private companies by 8 percent, to $1.802 billion, compared with the quarter before. That's the highest level in four quarters.

Still, the amount was down compared with a year ago, and stays within the range of $1.5 billion and $2.0 billion seen since investing hit a bottom in 2002 after the Internet bubble burst.

The data was part of a quarterly survey released today by Ernst & Young and VentureOne. By comparison, venture capitalists invested $9.279 billion in local companies during the first quarter of 2000.

The local trend mirrors the national picture. Nationwide, venture capitalists invested $5.39 billion, or 14 percent more than the quarter before, but also down from a year ago. The quarterly rise had much to do with an increase in investments in later-stage deals, which generally involve larger dollar amounts, at the expense of early, seed-stage start-ups, according to the report.

Investments in local life-science companies continued to decline, reaching its lowest level since 2003. This mirrored a general slowdown in that sector nationwide, as public investors seem less willing to support as many initial public offerings. And as seen in previous quarters, many secretive companies prefer to make no announcements, which may bias the data.

Sharon Wienbar of BA Venture Partners in San Francisco said her firm had made two life-science investments last quarter, yet to be announced. "We haven't lost interest in the sector," she said. Other venture groups may go in and out of health-care investing, she said, depending on market conditions.

Investments in information technology were up, with communications companies leading the way -- enjoying a 178 percent increase compared with the first quarter, to $420 million. Semiconductor start-ups saw a doubling of investments, to $263 million.

David Britts, partner at Palo Alto venture firm ComVentures, which focuses on telecom, says one reason for the increase in communications investments is that he and other venture capitalists are putting their money in companies that sell gear to the large telecommunications carriers building out their networks throughout the world.

In particular, he mentioned Asian companies like China Telecom, China Netcom, Korea Telecom, Yahoo Broadband Japan, and Europe's British Telecommunication and France Telecom. "Everywhere except the U.S.," he said.

Still, even the U.S. carriers will begin to build out their networks, as developments like Internet Protocol Television begin to catch on, he said. Later-stage capital for communications companies was more than a third higher than a year ago, according to the report.

The rise in communications investing was reflected in the region's largest deals for the quarter. Santa Clara's Entrisphere and San Jose's Caspian Networks, both infrastructure communications companies, were the biggest, raising $75 million and $55 million, respectively.

These companies are relatively mature, with Entrisphere raising its third round of capital, and Caspian raising its fifth. The third largest deal was San Jose's T-Ram, a semiconductor company, which raised $40 million in its third round.