A quarter century of communication
Vodafone celebrates 25 years of innovation in Ireland this year.
On a dreary day in March 2026, on an island 3½ miles off the coast of Mayo, a Vodafone engineer picked up his smartphone and made a call. Clare Island was historically known as the home of Gráinne O’Malley, the 16th-century pirate queen, but after this phone call it would become famous for something else entirely.
Robert Ivers was in a “desolated, isolated spot bang in the middle of Clare Island where there was no coverage,” he recalls.
He and his fellow Vodafone crew had spent two weeks on this island attempting to connect with AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellites that were circumnavigating Earth every 90 minutes.
“Their coverage would only last for up to three minutes,” Ivers says. On the 14th attempt, positioned on the west side of An Cnoc Mór, a 462m mountain on Clare Island, Ivers tapped a number into his Samsung smartphone. The signal sped upward 650km at the speed of light to a passing satellite, that bounced it back to the Vodafone Ireland office in Dublin. Sabrina Casalta, chief executive, picked up. “Hi Rob,” she said. “It’s incredible. You just made history here.”
This was the first mobile phone call to be made via satellite from a standard smartphone in the EU. The Vodafone engineer was aware of the weight of this moment. “I was elated, to be honest,” he says. It was not, however, the first time Vodafone Ireland made history.
Over the past 25 years, since its inception in 2001, the company has invested €20 billion in the Irish market, evolving to feed the demand of customers. Vodafone Ireland was the first to introduce 3G, 4G and 5G, and now satellite technology.
“Innovation,” says Sheila Kavanagh, network director at Vodafone Ireland, “is at the heart of everything we do. We always want to be on the forefront. Ireland, in the context of the wider Vodafone group, is the perfect market. We’re small and agile. We can move fast. We can get things done quickly.”
After the first successful call, Vodafone has since tested satellite with the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) for emergency services. The technology will benefit users in remote areas. While on Clare Island, Ivers spoke to local fishermen who had been unable to connect to mobile networks when encountering difficulties at sea. Police, fire, ambulance services, and other first responders might also avail of the technology.
In 2026, the telecommunications environment is very different from that of 2001, when Vodafone completed its acquisition of Eircell to become Vodafone Ireland. Sheila Kavanagh remembers those days well. She started working for Eircell in 1996 as a core network engineer and joined Vodafone Ireland from its inception. “Eircell was the mobile arm of Telecom Éireann [the state-owned telecommunications company]. I remember getting my first mobile phone. It was a novelty to have a phone back then.”
It was novelty that quickly grew momentum. “We were one of the earlier countries to reach saturation of mobile phone ownership,” says Deryck Fay, author of Connecting A Nation, The Story of Telecommunications In Ireland.
“In the typical family home of the 1980s or 1990s, the phone was typically in the hall. You’d have chatty teenagers on it and parents giving out to them, saying ‘Do you know how much that costs’?”
In 1997, Eircell launched Ready To Go, Ireland’s first prepaid mobile phone service, that changed everything, according to Fay. “It took phones from being a business commodity to something that everybody could have. Now parents could give the chatty teenagers a phone and £10 credit and tell them, ‘When you run out of credit, go to the shop and pay for more with your own pocket money’.”
From 1997, there was an explosion in penetration, bolstered by the introduction of texting via SMS [Short Message Service] and the creation of cross-network texting (between 086 and 087 numbers) two years later in 1999.
When Vodafone Ireland was born in 2001, maintaining the Ready To Go prepaid service, mobile phone usage was mainstream. “Devices were cheaper,” says Kavanagh. “Everyone started using mobile and we saw phenomenal growth in customer numbers and voice usage, although not so much in terms of data usage.”
Competition – in the form of the launch of Esat Digifone in 1997 and Meteor in 2001 – helped reduce prices and encourage innovation. “The wave and the pace at which the industry has grown over that period were phenomenal,” says Kavanagh.
Vodafone Ireland usually led the way, though. In 2004, the company introduced 3G, Ireland’s first commercial third-generation mobile phone service. The technology was arguably ahead of its time. “In the early days, not a lot of people could use it,” says Fay. “It enabled faster data speeds but, remember, this was before the iPhone and before smartphones. There wasn’t really much need for data on a phone. You could watch a video on your phone but the screens were so tiny it wasn’t suitable.”
The telecoms expert considers the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) in 2003 a more significant watershed. European legislation allowed mobile users to change providers while maintaining their phone number. “Before that, people were stuck if they wanted to change network. If you had a business number on the side of your work van, then you didn’t have much choice other than to stay with the same provider.”
The most seismic moment in Irish and global telecommunications over the past quarter century was the introduction of the smartphone. Sheila Kavanagh describes this as a catalyst for change. “Not only was the network evolving but the devices customers were using were evolving too. It put the internet into your device.”
Deryck Fay says: “Manufacturers, beginning with Apple, produced devices that used and needed data. Now 3G had a market. Like a lot of things in telecoms, sometimes the technology outpaces the market.” The 3G version of the iPhone arrived in Ireland in 2008. By Christmas 2009, Android phones were on sale.
“It drove a huge explosion in data usage,” says Fay. “It created the idea that the phone was essential. It wasn’t just a way of communicating; it was a computer in your pocket. It changed people’s relationships with phones. To this day, it’s the most personal possession that most people have. It completely revolutionised mobile telephony.”
Vodafone Ireland guided the subsequent upsurge in usage. In 2010, it became the first company in Ireland to introduce 21Mbps mobile broadband speeds. The following year, the company secured the largest allocation of mobile spectrum available to the market. But mobile was only one part of the puzzle.
Vodafone predicted fibre would become a key component of future telecommunications in Ireland and it invested accordingly. In 2015, the company pioneered bringing fibre to the home market through SIRO, its collaboration with ESB. “We initially started as a mobile-centric business but evolved to become a fully converged player,” says Kavanagh, who today sits on the SIRO board.
Deryck Fay describes the roll-out of fibre in recent years as “amazing. We have gone from zero to hero. We were down towards the lower end of the European states [in terms of fibre availability]. Now we are near the top.”
Statistics bear this out. ComReg’s data report for Q2 2026, published September, found that 87 per cent of all premises across Ireland now avail of fibre connectivity: a 9 per cent increase from the same period in 2025. Westmeath has the highest fibre to the premises (FTTP) coverage at 95 per cent. “We have reached peaceful coexistence between mobile and wifi,” says Fay.
Over the past decade, 3G evolved to 4G and then 5G. That is where another unexpected (and in this case unwanted) moment changed telecommunications in Ireland forever: the Covid-19 pandemic.
“2020 was an inflection point for the telco industry,” says Kavanagh. “People were stuck at home and needed connectivity. The pandemic changed how businesses operated and engaged with each other.” It also changed perspectives on the National Broadband Plan, launched in 2019 to a chorus of scepticism. “As soon as people were working from home those arguments evaporated,” notes Fay. “Fibre gives people the opportunity to work from home, wherever that home may be, and enjoy Netflix in 4K.”
Over the past 25 years, Vodafone Ireland has become an important cog in the machine of Irish industry, partnering with Irish businesses to deliver cyber, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and advanced 5G networks. Alongside the innovation and expertise that helps underpin economic growth, the company’s connectivity has advanced social process.
In 2025, Vodafone Ireland became the first operator to launch real‑time text (RTT). The service, activated from a user’s Android or iOS handset settings, allows users to text and talk simultaneously, providing assistance for deaf, hard of hearing, and speech-impaired users.
The company, via the Vodafone Foundation, empowers older people by teaching them new technologies through a programme called Hi Digital. Liz Downes, a community activist and local Girl Guide leader from Mitchelstown, Co Cork is an evangelist for the programme.
“I’m 77,” she says. “Would you believe it? My body is 77 but my brain is 21.”
Downes routinely opens the doors of a local community hall where older people visit for a chat and a cup of tea. Her Girl Guides act as digital champions for the visitors – teaching them how to order prescriptions online, conduct Zoom calls with relatives in Australia, use Google Maps, get prescriptions online, and so on.
“A 92-year-old comes to the classes and she’s brilliant [at learning tech],” says Downes. “It empowers the older people because everything is online now. They love the interaction with the younger people. Sometimes people come in who want to learn about the technology but they end up having a chat. And that’s fine because some of them are very isolated.”
More than 200,000 older people have benefited from digital skills training through Hi Digital since its establishment in 2021. The programme, which Vodafone furnishes with donations of iPads, phones, and other devices, is likely to become more important in the future due to Ireland’s ageing population. (The number of people over 65 is projected to surpass one million by the late 2030s). Vodafone Ireland is not only investing in innovative ways to support our growing reliance on technology; it is creating a safety net for the future.
