Eircom eliminated 242 payphones between October and December 2001 in the final phase of a rationalisation process that has decommissioned 1,000 payphones across the Republic, reducing the number to just 6,939 from about 8,000 in late 2000.

The process, which caused some concern in rural areas, was now complete, Eircom said yesterday. It said it had no option but to reduce the number of payphones as each cost about €2,000 a year to maintain but generated just a few euros revenue per week.

Figures published by the telecoms regulator yesterday also show just 80 per cent of payphones were in full working order in the last three months of 2001. This was an improvement of 7 per cent on the previous quarter.

An Eircom spokeswoman said the firm had spent €7.6 million in upgrading its payphone network over the past year to make them compatible with the euro. Only unprofitable payphones had been decommissioned, she added.

Eircom said it was totally committed to its payphone division, despite the 79 per cent penetration of mobile phones here.

Meanwhile, the regulator's new performance figures show Eircom was late in delivering a service to a little more than a quarter of its new business customers in the last three months of 2001. This represented a similar performance by Eircom to its previous quarter. The performance survey shows Esat was late delivering a service to less than 4 per cent of its business customers in the same period.

Esat also significantly reduced the number of faults reported by customers on its direct access network in the final three months of 2001 with the figure falling to 10 faults per 100 lines, compared to 22 in the previous quarter. There was little change in Eircom's figures with customers reporting six faults per 100 lines in final quarter 2001.