Denis O'Brien put a very brave face on the courtroom defeat that allowed NTL take over Cablelink for an extraordinary £535 million (€679 million), saying that it is business as usual for Esat Telecom.
But the general view, however, is that Esat's non-mobile business has suffered a body-blow with the failure to get Cablelink. Esat now faces a situation where NTL will use Cablelink to vault into the number two position in the Irish telecoms business.
As NCB said last March: "Esat must win the Cablelink bid or risk the entry of a competing powerful Irish telecoms force with a strong local presence." NTL/Cablelink is now that powerful competitor.
Put it simply, despite an awful lot of hard work to build up its network, Nasdaq values Esat's non-mobile business at less than $175 million (€162 million), with the 49.5 per cent stake in Esat Digifone accounting for nearly four fifths of Esat's stock market value.
Denis O'Brien has a lot of hard thinking to do if Esat Telecom is to develop in the face of powerful competition from Telecom Eireann and NTL, and the strength of that competition will undoubtedly fuel speculation that Esat will try to forge an alliance with a large international telecoms group to allow it to compete more effectively in what is increasingly becoming a dog-eat-dog Irish telecoms market.
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