BT Ireland

BT Communications (Ireland) Limited, (formerly Esat Telecommunications Limited), is a telecommunications and internet company in Ireland. It is a subsidiary of BT Group plc.

Merger of Esat Telecom and BT N.Ireland

When BT acquired Esat Telecommunications Limited they began integrating the business along with its Northern Ireland subsidiary, BT (NI). The combined unit was then registered as BT Communications (Ireland) Limited.

The company's main business is in fixed line telcommunications where it owns its own network in Northern Ireland and owns a network built along the Iarnród Éireann rail network in the Republic of Ireland, completed in 1999 while leasing capacity off fixed line incumbent, Eircom. It provides services such as voice telecoms, dial-up and broadband Internet access. It does not currently install telephone lines for its customers in the south of Ireland, however this may change in the future. Currently they are the biggest provider of broadband in Northern Ireland with 100% of exchanges broadband-enabled, while the 2nd biggest broadband provider in the Republic of Ireland with 35% of first time customers joining them. Its main competitors are Eircom, (Eircom, with a virtual monopoly, holds 80% of Irish market), Virgin Media (in Northern Ireland), Irish Broadband and Smart Telecom. BT Ireland has recently begun offering "single billing" accounts to residential customers, meaning they no longer need a fixed-line account with Eircom to access services. BT is now the second largest provider of Broadband internet in Ireland and has become extremely popular due to its recognisable brand.

Esat Digifone

Esat Digifone, a GSM mobile phone network which was the first competitor to Eircell (then a Telecom Éireann subsidiary) was originally a joint venture between Esat Telecom and Telenor, however when Esat was sold to BT, the mobile division became part of BT Wireless, which was eventually spun off as O2, which in turn was bought [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/31/o2_telefonica/] by Spanish-based Telefonica in 2005 (EU approved [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/11/o2_eu_roam/] in 2006).

History

The company was founded in 1989 by Denis O'Brien, and was originally known as Esat Telecommunications Limited, or "Esat Telecom". The name Esat originally came from "Esat Television Limited", a television company set up by O'Brien in 1986 which owned a stake in "The Shopping Channel", broadcast on the Sky Television platform from May 1989 to July 1990, after which the company collapsed. The name Esat - said to be an abbreviation of "Éireann Satellite" and connected to O'Briens bid for Ireland's communications satellite licence under the 1977 ITU frequency plans - would become much more associated with telcommunications in Ireland however.

Esat Telecom applied a number of times for a telecommunications licence to the Department of Communications and was finally granted a limited one in March 1993. The company officially launched its services on 20 April 1994. It was the first domestic competitor to Bord Telecom Eireann (now Eircom), and after initially reselling leased lines from that company used "autodiallers" to route calls onto its network. These devices proved controversial, with Telecom threatening legal action and the Department contending that these were a breach of Esat's limited licence. However an Esat complaint to the European Commission was upheld, and eventually in 1997, the new Director of Telecommunications Regulation (now called ComReg) regularised Esat's position by ordering Telecom Éireann to provide a service to switch calls onto Esat's network.

In 1996, Esat Telecom, in conjunction with Telenor AB, bid successfully for the second GSM mobile telecommunications licence, against five other consortia. This became known as Esat Digifone.

On 7 November, 1997, "Esat Telecom Group plc" held an initial public offering and was listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ Stock Market.

Originally the company targeted just corporate customers, however from 1 December 1998, when the Irish telecommunications market was fully deregulated, domestic customers were also targeted, under the "Esat Clear" brand name. 1,300 customers signed up before it had even launched. In 1999, Esat entered the Internet Service Provider market, initially through the purchase of EUnet Ireland, which became Esat Net. However it was the acquisition of Ireland On-Line from An Post that year which made Esat the biggest ISP in the country for a time. Also in 1999, Esat bid for Cablelink Limited, the cable and television company owned jointly by Telecom Éireann and RTÉ. However they were defeated in this by NTL.

Acquisition by BT

In 1999, relations became tense between Esat and Telenor over how Esat Digifone, their mobile joint venture, should be operated. Telenor tried to remove Denis O'Brien as chairman of Esat Digifone and remove the Esat name from the company. Esat for its part retaliated by threatening to sue Telenor, and making repeated offers to buy the Norwegian company out. Eventually, in November 1999, Telenor bid for the entire share capital of Esat Telecom Group plc as a way of solving the situation. The bid was rejected by the Esat board and so became a hostile takeover attempt. In order to defend this, in January 2000, British Telecommunications plc (now BT Group plc) made a friendly takeover offer for the company which was backed by the Esat board. Esat became a wholly owned subsidiary of BT and was delisted from the stock market.

Following the company's acquisition by BT, the company was rebranded as Esat BT, and replaced its own logo with the BT piper. (Ironically, BT itself dropped the piper logo shortly after, meaning that Esat BT also used a different logo from its parent.) It was announced in late 2004 that from April 2005, the name of the company would change from "Esat BT" to just "BT". The company has performed well and many people are now choosing BT over Eircom, which up until recently had a 100% monopoly on telecommunications in the Republic of Ireland.

All company names in the Esat BT Group were officially re-registered with the Companies Registration Office as BT in March 2005, and on 12 April, the company was officially rebranded as BT Ireland.

ee also

* British Telecom
* List of Irish companies
* Communications in Ireland
* BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition

References

* O'Kelly, Brendan, (2001) "The Esat Story". Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.

External links

* [http://www.irishtelecoms.com IrishTelecoms.com - Guide to Telecoms in Ireland]
* [http://www.btireland.ie Official site]