Telecom Eireann planning £10m `information age town'

TELECOM Eireann is planning to invest up to £10 million in what its chief executive calls an "information age town". This town will be "a test bed and prototype of what a town can be in the information age", Mr Alfie Kane told the IMI conference in Limerick.

Mr Kane said that this information age town would be selected from an open competition among communities which want to bid for it and would provide a full range of advanced telecommunications services including a phone in every home, high speed access to the Internet, ISDN connections and a multimedia pilot scheme.

Mr Kane said that towns interested in hosting this project would need to have a population of between 10,000 and 30,000 to give the project critical mass. He added that specifications would be drawn up in about a month and the location would be chosen by next March.

The exact cost to Telecom will depend on the size of the town chosen and the level of outside investment from hardware and software companies. Telecom Eireann will be looking for partners who will provide the necessary hardware and software to facilitate the provision of personal computers. "Our information age town with give people the opportunity to show us how and to help kick start the information age," Mr Kane stated.

Mr Kane told delegates that Ireland had an opportunity to gain a large proportion of the jobs that this information age would bring. "What this means is that Ireland could, if we play our cards right, get quite a disproportionate amount of the global 25 per cent of the workforce that might be employed in information jobs.

"For example, if we succeed in retaining our own information jobs and, in addition, attract to Ireland just 1 per cent of the total information jobs from Europe and North America, then we would have doubled the number of information age jobs in Ireland."

Mr Kane warned that failure to compete ford these jobs would condemn Ireland to depending for growth on sectors that had already passed their peak.

In a reference to the growing number of international call centres, Mr Kane said 30 per cent were now located in Ireland. He reiterated, however, the warning from IDA Ireland chief executive, Mr Kieran McGowan, that there was a shortage of multi-lingual young people for these industries.