NTL has completed its acquisition of the former Telecom Eireann cable company, Cablelink. It will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the NTL group.

Last May, NTL paid £535 million for Cablelink, which needs a further £200 million investment to bring it up to the standard necessary to deliver high speed communications and services to its 350,000 customers.

Mr Ian Jeffers has been appointed to run the Cablelink team and operation here. He is currently managing director of NTL in Cambridge and was previously deputy managing director of NTL in Northern Ireland. His initial brief will be to integrate Cablelink with the NTL group.

The acquisition has made NTL the largest provider of cable and telephony services in Britain and Ireland. This is set to grow as NTL continues its strategy of investment in telecommunications and Internet companies.

It has already emerged as a forerunner to purchase An Post's Internet subsidiary PostGem/Ireland On-Line, which is believed to be close to a sale. Last month PostGem/IOL distributed a prospectus detailing its assets, business and turnover to a number of multimedia and telecommunications companies.

NTL has said it is considering the proposal, and a number of industry sources have said IOL's 40,000 subscriber base would provide NTL with a very large residential base, many of whom may also be Cablelink customers.

NTL has not specified its immediate plans for Cablelink, but it has committed to providing a range of broadband multimedia services in Ireland, through a 750 megahertz two way digital cable network. NTL is currently building a cable network in Northern Ireland, has 63,000 customers and is expanding at a rate of 2,000 a month.