Telecom Éireann (; meaning "Telecommunications of Ireland") was an Irish state-owned telecommunications company that operated from 1983 to 1999. Prior to then a telephone and postal service was provided by the

Department of Posts and Telegraphs The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs ( ga, Aire Poist agus Telegrafa) was the holder of a position in the Government of Ireland (and, earlier, in the Executive Council of the Irish Free State). From 1924 until 1984 – when it was abolished � ...

(known as "P and T" or "P⁊Ꞇ" in gaelic script), as part of the

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. 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 Eircom Limited, trading as Eir ( ; stylised eir), is a large fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. The now privatised company, which is currently incorporated in Jersey, traces its origins to the Ireland's former ...

''.

Upgrading the network

Telecom Éireann rolled out digital telephone switching technology, across the country along with an extensive

fibre optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

and digital

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ran ...

backbone. Two digital switching systems were selected; CIT-

Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...

's E10 and

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informat ...

AXE telephone exchange The AXE telephone exchange is a product line of circuit switched digital telephone exchanges manufactured by Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by Ellemtel, a research and development subsidiary of Ericsson and Tele ...

. 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, Hitachi and ITT Pentaconta technology dating from the 1960s and 1970s were converted to digital bit by bit through the late 1980s and early 1990s. These

crossbar switch In electronics and telecommunications, a crossbar switch (cross-point switch, matrix switch) is a collection of switches arranged in a matrix configuration. A crossbar switch has multiple input and output lines that form a crossed pattern of int ...

es 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 and had become 100% digitally switched. In June 1996, a

strategic alliance A strategic alliance (also see strategic partnership) is an agreement between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives needed while remaining independent organizations. The alliance is a cooperation or collaboration which ai ...

was formed between Telecom Éireann of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, Telia of

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

and

KPN KPN (in full Koninklijke KPN N.V., also Royal KPN N.V.) is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. History Un ...

of the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, after both companies purchased a combined 35 percent stake in Telcom Éireann. The alliance was completed by 2001, when Telia and KPN exited Ireland. During the time of the alliance it was headquartered in

St Stephens Green St Stephen's Green () is a garden square and public park located in the city centre of Dublin, Ireland. The current landscape of the park was designed by William Sheppard. It was officially re-opened to the public on Tuesday, 27 July 1880 by Lo ...

and

Harcourt Street Harcourt Street is a street located in Dublin City, Ireland. Location It is a little over in length with its northerly start at the south-east corner of St Stephen's Green and terminates in the south at the point where Adelaide road become ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

. The company also did a major upgrade to the

payphone A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with prepayment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit ...

network in the late 1980s, which saw the rollout of

smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

based payphones across Ireland. The Telecom Éireann CallCard was one of the earliest implementations chip-based cards in the world.

Eircell

Telecom Éireann launched

Eircell Eircell was an Irish mobile cellular network provider which was established in 1984, with operations commencing in 1986. Its access code was 088 for the original analogue TACS system and 087 for the later GSM system. Following the abolition of th ...

(now

Vodafone Ireland Vodafone Ireland Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, is a mobile phone network and broadband provider in the Republic of Ireland. It was created when the Vodafone Group bought Eircell, the mobile arm of Telecom Éireann. A ...

) 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 Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS are variants of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) which were announced as the choice for the first two UK national cellular systems in February 1983, less than a year after the UK government an ...

, or

TACS Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS are variants of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) which were announced as the choice for the first two UK national cellular systems in February 1983, less than a year after the UK government an ...

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 The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

technology from

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.

Other divisions

*Minitel Ireland (joint venture) The company launched

Minitel The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France. The service was ...

videotext system in Ireland in 1991 in a joint venture with

France Telecom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

, AIB and

Crédit Lyonnais The Crédit Lyonnais (, "Lyon Credit ompany) was a major French bank, created in 1863 and absorbed by former rival Crédit Agricole in 2003. Its head office was initially in Lyon but moved to Paris in 1882. In the early years of the 20th cent ...

. The system went live after 3 years of trials and development but due to poor uptake, probably due to its relatively late launch that coincided with the beginning of the

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

, a more flexible system with a vast array of English-language content, it quickly faded from public attention. The Irish Minitel system had been planned as early as 1988 and envisioned building an ecosystem similar to its French counterpart, with shopping, banking and information services. Minitel Ireland was ultimately shut down due a small and dwindling user base. *Telecom Internet In 1997, Telecom Éireann established Telecom Internet also known as Tinet, the

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

the company rapidly became one of the partners in the

Internet Neutral Exchange Internet Neutral Exchange (INEX) is an Internet exchange located in the Republic of Ireland, operating three VLANs at points of presence in Dublin at Equinix DB1 - Citywest, BT - Citywest, Equinix DB2 (Formerly Data Electronics) - Kilcarbery Park, ...

and is today known as eircom net. *Eirpage Telecom Éireann established Eirpage, a national

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage ...

system in Ireland. This system was then controlled and operated by Voxpro Communications, formerly Pageboy (www.voxpro.ie) until the closure of the National Paging System in August 2011. *Eirpac Launched in 1984 to replace Euronet, Eirpac is the Irish public switched data network supporting

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

and

X.28 X.28 is an ITU-T standard specifying the interface between asynchronous character-mode data terminal equipment (DTE), such as computer terminals, and a Packet Assembler/Disassembler (PAD) that connects the DTE to a packet switched network such as a ...

*TEIS (Telecom Éireann Information Systems) This unit sold business systems and office telephone systems to business customers. *TeleCentre – this was Telecom Éireann's retail arm, which was later renamed eircom Store and then shut down as eircom moved away from physical customer contact centres. Since the closure of the stores, customers can only contact eircom online or by telephone. *Phonewatch – Provides monitored alarm services to both residential and business customers. The company was rebranded as eircom PhoneWatch. It is one of the largest players in the Irish home security market and was sold to a Norwegian company in 2012.

Support

In 1988, it sponsored RTÉ Weather until 1999.

Privatisation

Telecom Éireann was privatised in 1999 and renamed as ''eircom'' plc. It was later split into ''Eircell 2000 plc'' (Eircell), the mobile networks business, and ''eircom'', the fixed-line business which also inherited other minor divisions, such as the Eirpage pager system and the Telecom retail arm. Eircell was sold to

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...

in May 2001, and later changed its name to the dual-brand Eircell Vodafone before becoming

Notes

References

Popular culture

In the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...