THE customers have turned sardonic. One businessman answers his car-phone: "Welcome to the Eircell network. You'll probably lose me at least once in the course of this conversation."
The bad news for him, and for Eircell's 225,520 other subscribers, is that the drop-outs in Dublin coverage will continue for at least another five months.
For nine years, from the start of its analogue network in December 1985 until January of this year, Eircell completely underestimated the potential of its own product. When the company caught on, and realised that it would soon face stiff competition from Esat Digifone, a scramble began to sign up customers.
"It took us 10 years to get our first 100,000 customers, and 10 months to get the next 100,000," says Ms Brenda Moriarty, Eircell's head of marketing.
But even as the hordes lined up for their new phones, the system they were buying into, designed for quieter days, was creaking at the seams. Now, Eircell is playing catch-up, rebuilding the network.
The problem centres on perhaps the most important element of the business of mobile telephony: frequency management. Each time a customer turns on a mobile phone, it locks on to a particular frequency, emitted from the nearest mast. To avoid clashes, holes in coverage and drop outs, no two adjacent masts should be tuned to the same frequency.
But frequencies are a limited resource, so when Eircell erects a new mast and transmitter, it is not always easy to ensure that it won't clash with one of the four or five masts that surround it. In Dublin, where the density of population and buildings is highest, this is especially difficult.
In recent weeks, Eircell has increased the number of base stations by 57 per cent; there are now 450 in total, with 100 more planned over the next four or five months. By next spring, the company will have spent £120 million revamping the network.
"We're trying to minimise the disruption, but we can't negate it completely," says Ms Moriarty.
But customer frustration is already bubbling, often cent ring not on the drop outs during calls, but on the automatic answering system. Many time conscious executives are infuriated when they realise that callers have been switched to Eircell's automatic answering service, even though the mobile line was not occupied.
Their annoyance grows when they sometimes don't get the message left on the answering machine for a further 12 hours.
Meanwhile, Esat Digifone, which was due to introduce a rival service on December 1st, is watching and learning. Yesterday the company announced that it was prepared to delay the start date if it wasn't entirely confident in its network.
With Eircell's problems set to continue until well into next year, consumers may be willing to put the newcomers to the test.
