A restructuring of senior management within Esat Telecom is underway as part of its merger with Ocean which was prompted by British Telecom's takeover of Esat earlier this year.

Former Oceanfree.net director, Mr Derek Kickham, has been appointed to head a new consumer Internet division and a former director of Esat, Mr Richard Cooke, has been appointed director of a new fixed line and corporate Internet division.

Chief executive of Esat Digifone, Mr Barry Maloney, is not affected by the management changes and will remain one rung below Mr Neil Parkinson, chief executive of the Esat Telecom group, alongside the new appointments.

The changes follow British Telecom's decision to split Esat into three separate business units. Another layer of management appointments are currently being finalised as Ocean's businesses are absorbed into the Esat structure. This process should be completed within six to eight weeks.

Mr George McGrath, chief executive of Ocean, departed his post almost two weeks ago. He indicated late last year that he would resign his position this year.

It is understood the newly-merged company will retain the Esat brand name under a new divisional structure being put in place by British Telecom. The newly merged company will become a major force in the domestic telecoms market, with about 60,000 fixed line residential customers, some 130,000 customers using its Internet Service Providers and laying claim to just under half the corporate Internet market.

The company will have a combined fibre optic network in the Republic of more than 2,000 kilometres - some 1,800 km of this from ESAT Telecom and 330km 700km of subsea cabling.