Eir (telecommunications)

Eircom Limited

Type	Limited company
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	1999
Headquarters	1HSQ, St. John's Road, Dublin 8, D08 A9RT, Ireland
Key people	Richard Moate (CEO) Padraig McManus (Non-Executive chairman)
Products	Telephone, Mobile telecommunications, Internet, Digital TV
Revenue	€1.265 billion (FY 14/15) €1.3 billion (FY 15/16E)
Owner	Eir Holdings Ltd.
Number of employees	3,437
Subsidiaries	Meteor Mobile Communications Open Eir Eir Business NI eircom Net (ISP) LAN Communications Eir UK Eir Mobile Eir Vision
Website	eir.ie

Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, is a fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland, and a former state-owned monopolist. It is the largest telecommunications operator in the Republic, with a division to service the business and corporate telecom markets in Northern Ireland and Britain. As Bord Telecom Éireann, the company was state-owned until 1999, when it was floated on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.

Eir operates the fixed-line telephone network, an LTE (4G), HSDPA (3G) and GSM/EDGE (2.75G) mobile telephone network Meteor (acquired from AllTel (Western Wireless) in 2005) and acts as an internet service provider (ISP) eircom.net. As of Q1 2013, Eircom had 54% market share of fixed voice lines; 40% market share of fixed broadband; 11% of mobile broadband; and 17% of mobile. By late 2007 Eircom added their 500,000th DSL subscriber but broadband share may have fallen to 44% due to growth of fixed wireless, cable and fibre services.

Its main competitors are Virgin Media Ireland (which operates a cable TV & Broadband network), Vodafone Ireland (which bought BT Ireland's residential customer base on 22 July 2009 and is accessed through Eir's network and BT Ireland's fibre), Imagine Communications (Irish Broadband & Gaelic Telecom) and Magnet Networks and Smart Telecom, with a mix of LLU/GLUMP from Eircom and fibre.

Eir operates the largest fixed-line telecommunications network in the Republic of Ireland, under licence from the Commission for Communications Regulation. Most homes and businesses in the state are dependent on their network. A range of telecommunications services is provided on the network including Business IP, its platform. Eir have also completed a wholly owned fibre network ring around Northern Ireland and another around Belfast. Their ISP division, Eir Net, provides dial-up services, as well as broadband services (see broadband roll-out, below). Any alarm-monitoring products using SMS are "hardcoded" to work with Eir's SMSC, so will not work on Digiweb, BT, Smart, UPC or Magnet phone networks. DECT SMS handsets are also preprogrammed for Eir's SMSC. Any competing phone service that is not just carrier pre-selection (CPS) of Eir must provide their own SMSC, but even when they do, consumers may be unable to migrate from Eir due to SMSC numbers in equipment that cannot be reprogrammed.