Eircom confident of winning Smart customers

EIRCOM is apparently confident of winning a significant number of the 40,000 or so former Smart Telecom fixed-line customers when the ‘deadline’ for them to decide on which telecommunications service provider they want to sign up to for the long-term passes tomorrow and Eircom’s interim re-connection service ends.

This is despite the fact that a significant number of consumers have yet to be re-connected and are still without basic telephone services. Industry sources suggest that Eircom — given its leading market position — should expect to see a decent percentage of customers re-signing to its service. It is not clear how many of the 40,000 affected people have been reconnected.

A spokesperson for Eircom, however, said yesterday that it would take time to see where customers are choosing to go. “At no stage have we claimed that we could simply sweep up displaced customers,” they said.

In all, 57,000 people were affected when Smart suspended services last month after failing to settle debts it owed to Eircom. Of these, 40,000 fixed-line customers are effectively up for grabs.

Earlier this month, Eircom pulled the plug on Smart customers after the latter failed to pay part of the €3.7 million it owed Eircom. Smart bought call minutes at a wholesale rate from Eircom and then sold them on to its own customers at a discounted rate. After an agreement brokered by ComReg customers were able to make and receive local and national calls.

According to one source, however, a number of Smart’s former fixed-line customers have never been re-connected and cannot make any calls, including to the emergency services.

One Cork-based customer told the Irish Examiner yesterday that they had received a number of vague messages as to possible reconnection dates but with nothing coming to fruition. When asked would they opt to sign up to Eircom as a long-term fixed-line customer, they said “never in a million years”.