Ringing true

TELCOS:THE CONCERTED round of consolidation that has begun between Irish telecommunications service providers has yet to feed into the Top 1000 ranking., writes John Collins.

The chart seems to provide some backing for the claims by ComReg and Minister for Communications Eamonn Ryan that there is healthy competition between providers.

Eircom, which continues to be the biggest player with revenues of €1.97 billion dropped a few places as growth in its core landline business stalled. Despite revenues of €1.25 billion Ireland's largest mobile operator Vodafone, slipped seven places and this year is Ireland's 40th largest company.

BT Ireland was the only other telco to turn over in excess of €1 billion (€1.09 billion in the year to the end of March 2007) but it should be noted that of all the telcos, BT has had the most success building up revenues from the provision of other technology services, particularly IT managed services.

Ireland's second largest operator, Telefonica subsidiary O2 Ireland, had revenues of €834 million, according to its most recently filed accounts. The Eircom-owned operator Meteor clocks in with an estimated €300 million, but after that it's a long way down to 3 Ireland with an estimated €65 million. It should be noted, however, that the latter has been adding subscribers rapidly and now has over 250,000. Although 3 Ireland does not disclose the average revenue it generates per user, it is believed to be more than any other Irish operator thanks to the wide range of multimedia content it offers.

The only other service providers that breach the top 1,000 are Smart Telecom, the subject of ongoing takeover speculation, and Perlico which was taken over by Vodafone in a deal worth up to €80 million, depending on whether it achieves certain targets, with revenues of €25 million and €19.5 million respectively.

Although it is not a telco, Conduit generated a respectable €61 million through the provision of call centre services with a number of telcos, most notably Vodafone, outsourcing customer service to the firm.

O2's revenues would be significantly higher if they included O2 Retail, the company that owns its chain of stores and turned over €79.4 million. However, despite the Irish obsession with mobile phones - there are 117 of them in the country for every 100 inhabitants - it is an Irish-registered German retailer of mobiles, GetMobile, that ranks the highest of all the retailers with revenues of €100.8 million. British-owned chain Carphone Warehouse clocked in with €65.2 million. Handset distributor BPI Telecom also had a strong showing breaking into the top 400 with revenues of €106 million.

It is also worth noting that Nokia Ireland, which derives revenues almost exclusively from supplying handsets to Irish mobile operators, generated sales of €234.7 million.