Telecom Éireann
 |
|
| State-Owned Company | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Fate | Privatised |
| Successor | Eircom |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Defunct | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Ardilaun Hall, St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland |
|
Area served
|
Ireland |
| Products | Landline |
| Revenue | IR£788 million 1993 |
|
Number of employees
|
~13,100 |
| Divisions | Eircell |
Telecom Éireann (Irish pronunciation: [tʲɛlʲɛkəmˠ ˈeːrʲən̪ˠ], meaning "Telecommunications of Ireland") was an Irish state-owned telecommunications company from 1983 to 1999. Prior to then a telephone and postal service was provided by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs (known as "P and T"), as part of the civil service. Telecom Éireann was established by the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act, 1983; its full formal title was "Bord Telecom Éireann or, in the English language, The Irish Telecommunications Board". "Telecom Éireann" may be translated as "Telecom of Ireland". In 1999 the company was privatised and renamed as Eircom.
Telecom Éireann rolled out digital telephone switching technology, across the country along with an extensive fibre optic and digital microwave backbone. Two digital switching systems were selected; CIT-Alcatel's E10 and Ericsson's AXE telephone exchange. Digital technology quickly replaced analogue systems at national and major regional switching centres and new international gateway switches were installed. The oldest electromechanical step-by-step exchanges and manual operator-manned local exchanges were the first to be converted to digital technology. More modern electromechanical crossbar exchanges, using Ericsson ARF technology dating from the 1960s and 1970s were converted to digital bit by bit through the late 1980s and early 1990s. These crossbar switches were capable of providing voice service that was comparable to digital switching technology.
By the early 1990s, the Irish network was amongst the most modern and most digitalised in the world and by the mid 1990s had become 100% digitally switched.
The company also did a major upgrade to the payphone network in the late 1980s, which saw the rollout of smart card based payphones across Ireland. The Telecom Éireann CallCard was one of the earliest implementations chip-based cards in the world.
Telecom Éireann launched Eircell (now Vodafone Ireland) in 1984, with operations commencing in 1986. The company deployed a national mobile telephone network based on a first generation mobile technology known as the Total Access Communication System, or TACS for short. This technology, similar to AMPS, was also used in the UK by Vodafone and Cellnet. Eircell launched their digital network based on GSM technology from Ericsson in 1993. GSM service rapidly replaced the TACS network as customers migrated over to new digital technology. Within a few years, the TACS network was obsolete and taken off air.
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Wikipedia