Eir to spend €150m upgrading its mobile network

Telecoms company Eir plans to spend €150 million on boosting its mobile network to provide the newest technology to its customers.

Eir, which sells mobile and fixed-line telephone services to customers in the Republic, intends to install fourth-generation (4G) equipment at all its sites and add hundreds of new ones to its network over the next two years.

The company pledged on Monday to spend €150 million on the project, which will give customers high-speed data services.

Eir said that the investment would boost both voice and data services throughout the Republic.

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Carolan Lennon, Eir’s chief executive, described the investment in the company’s network as significant.

"Building on the substantial infrastructure we already have in place, we will strengthen significantly our coverage in both urban and rural Ireland, " she said.

Eir also intends adding fifth-generation technology to the Republic’s cities from 2019.

Ms Lennon claimed that the move would make Eir "by far the largest investor in telecoms" in the Republic.

€1 billion investment

The €150 million spending plan is part of an overall €1 billion investment programme that will run over the next five years.

“The programme will also see an expansion of our high-speed fibre-to-the-home rollout to deliver broadband speeds of up to 1,000 megabytes per second to a further 1.4 million homes and businesses across the country,” Ms Lennon said.

Chinese technology giant Huawei will provide Eir's radio network equipment while Swedish telecoms specialist, Ericsson, will continue to have responsibility for the main network.

Eir last month said it would create 750 jobs at offices in Sligo, Cork and Limerick as it was bringing customer services operations back in-house.

Almost half of the new jobs, which are mainly in customer services, will be in Sligo town.

The announcement came shortly after the company said it would end its contract with HCL Technologies, the Indian business that operated its call centres in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.

That decision left about 650 staff facing the choice of moving out of Dublin to new facilities or accepting redundancy.