Upcoming name change can’t come soon enough for Eircom

It is 16 years since Telecom Éireann rebranded as Eircom. That is an aeon for a leading brand in the ever-changing world of technology and media, so the company was probably overdue a rebrand in any event.

But given what befell Eircom yesterday when huge chunks of its network stopped functioning, driving many of its customers crazy, the planned upcoming name change can’t come soon enough.

It has trademarked the name Eir, although the company won’t confirm if that is to be its new name. However, it is unlikely to be far off.

Eircom has never been a particularly disliked brand in the Irish market, but it has also never been loved. It had a difficult birth. Hordes of ordinary punters were led by the nose into investing in the disastrous 1999 flotation.

For a while, any mention of Eircom in kitchens and sculleries up and down the land was inevitably followed by grumblings about savings lost or loans wasted.

For the following decade, as Eircom ran through the hands of private equity houses, the name became synonymous with the kind of tycoon-enriching financial engineering that simply serves to get ordinary people’s backs up.

A few years after that, Eircom effectively went bust and ended up in examinership, from which it was rescued by the consortium of banks that now own it. Insolvency is never a good look for a brand.

Despite yesterday’s speed wobble, Eircom is now fundamentally a much better company than it has been in years. It has invested more than €1 billion in its network, returned to topline growth, and it wants to start a new chapter.

The rumour is the moniker will change in the third week of September. But what now for its lender-owners, who must still be mulling an exit after their attempt at a flotation last year was abandoned. The last rebrand was shortly followed by an IPO. Will that happen this time?