WITH the country's second GSM service scheduled to go live this autumn, Esat Digifone's customer service staff began training in Limerick last week on GSM networks, phone models, customer interaction and keyboarding.
The staff will spend four weeks on GSM and customer care, then about three weeks on using systems for functions such as ticketing and fault logging, and the telephone system that they will be using. Then follows a further week on topics such as GSM coverage, roaming, networks and switching, and two or three weeks of role playing, practising what they have learned.
While they are answering queries, the staff will be able to call up technical details of the customer's phone. Mary O'Donovan, customer care manager, says the trainees themselves will study the appropriate manuals and write the input for this database. "We have a whole lot of procedures to develop, and we will do it ourselves with help from Telenor," she said.
Telenor Invest AS, a subsidiary of Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications company, is one of three shareholders in Esat Digifone, and has established systems in Hungary, Russia and Norway.
Meanwhile, the customer care centre in the National Technological Park in Limerick is being fitted with a Northern Telecom Meridian 61C system. The centre will be in the same building as Ashling Microsystems for about a year, pending the construction of a purpose built centre.
About 150 people will be employed in Limerick and the same number in Dublin, with employment around the country expected to reach around 500.
Decision making on planning applications for mobile phone masts should speed up following the publication last Wednesday of the Department of the Environment's new planning guidelines. The previous week, Esat Digifone's joint chief executive Barry Maloney had made a plea for their publication, saying that many local authorities were refusing to consider applications in the absence of the guidelines.
The guidelines encourage sharing of masts or locating them in the same place as existing ones. According to Mr Maloney, Esat Digifone already has agreements with the ESB, RTE and several local radio stations to use their masts or sites. It has also arranged with Coillte to erect masts in woodland, although the antennae will have to protrude over the top of the trees.
"About 50 per cent of our requirements will be met by sharing or by our agreement with Coillte, leaving us with roughly 150 other masts to roll out," he said.
The company had around two thirds of the planning permissions needed. "We want to provide a nationwide service from the start, we don't want to launch with any gaps," he said. Asked about the range of services to be offered, he said it was too early to reveal these. "But I think people will be pleasantly surprised."