Eir set for €1bn boost

By Eamon Quinn

Carolan Lennon, the new chief executive at telecoms firm Eir, said a planned €1bn investment over the next five years will help it take on cable and mobile competitors.

Ms Lennon said she is confident that Enet, the sole company still involved in the proposed Government contract, will start work on the much delayed National Broadband Plan (NBP).

Ms Lennon, who has worked at Eir in senior roles for many years, took over the top job in recent months after a French telecoms firm belonging to billionaire Xavier Niel took a majority stake in Eir.

It marked yet another change in ownership for the former telecoms monopoly.

The planned investment is lower than the €1.5bn spent over the previous five years, but Eir said it is nonetheless a significant amount which would allow it to step up competition against cable rivals such as Virgin Media and mobile phone providers.

Talking after Eir posted full-year earnings, Ms Lennon said the money will help bring fibre broadband into more urban and semi-urban homes and bolster its mobile network.

She said the “focused” investment is sufficient because the €1.5bn spent over the previous five years had been spread over a wide range of projects.

It “future-proofs our investment”, she said.

Regarding the NBP, Ms Lennon said Eir is working with Enet, the sole company still involved in the proposed Government contract, on the NBP after Eir and other providers unexpectedly pulled out of the project earlier this year.

She said she is confident the contract will get under way, even though completing it for the last few remote homes may require some sort of wireless facility.

The Government set itself “a very ambitious target” to bring broadband fibre to every home and business in the country, she said, while other countries had contracted to cover 95% to 97% of their populations.

“We pulled out back in January because we did not have a commercial case and the complexity [involved] because we own many of the polls and ducts,” she said.

Enet will use some of the 1.5m poles and many kilometres of ducts owned by Eir, while the price of accessing that infrastructure is set by the regulator, she said.

Ms Lennon said Eir’s annual earnings were in line with expectations and she was pleased with the 2% increase in its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation, to €531m.

Revenue was down 2% to €1.27bn, while operating costs fell by 4%.