Mark Roden always knew that one day he would run his own business. A founding director of Esat Telecom, it is perhaps ironic that he discovered his business opportunity while touring the US on an Esat investment roadshow.

He noticed that in all the hotels and travel shops prepaid telephone calling cards were available. "I remember thinking that is not the case back in Ireland or in Europe."

He started work on the project last October and his company officially introduces its first card last week.

Roden's company Torc (the name is also a play on the word talk) brings another alternative on international calling cards to the market. The card, which is aimed at tourists and business people, can be used in 60 countries.

What is different, says Roden, is that Torc will be able to provide the cards to people who want to ring their own countries, as well as those who want to ring Ireland. Roden has spent the last six months negotiating agreements with, among others, Teleglobe in Canada, Esprit in Europe and, of course, Esat.

He says Torc will be one of the leaders in single pan-European numbers. "Irrespective of what country you are in you will be able to dial the same freephone number, instead of say one of 60 different numbers."

At present, 19 countries worldwide have the same freephone numbers; Torc now has one of these numbers. When you dial, a voice prompt gives you the necessary instructions in your native language.

The company has platforms in Dublin and London and is building four others Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Rome. A platform is an intelligent piece of software which gives the customer the necessary instructions on using the card. These platforms will be in operation 24 hours a day. Each platform costs around £200,000 and will add considerably to Roden's estimated £600,000 investment to date.

Roden (37) says Torc will be the leading international provider of these value-added services in Europe. Its added attraction is, of course, that it is cheaper than conventional calling cards he claims savings of up to 80 per cent on hotel charges and 60 per cent on international and national payphone charges.

Cheaper deals can be offered because Torc has spent several months concluding agreements with operators such as the US giant Sprint, which will have already bought capacity in countries around the world from existing operators.

The initial response to the card has taken Roden and his 17 staff, based in Dublin, by surprise. "It is running at three times ahead of projections," he says.

The company is using another young company as an entree to the marketplace Ryanair. Staff at the airline are actively selling the cards from the duty free trolleys.

"With Ryanair we are targeting the tourist and traveller in seven countries," he says.

People in Ireland tend to think of Ryanair as an Irish airline, he says, but Ryanair is now the leading low-cost operator in Europe. "We are literally on Ryanair's coat-tails, being brought into Europe."

He says Ryanair is the perfect distribution channel for calling cards. "When you travel you need to call and when you land in Europe you don't speak the language, you don't have the currency and you don't understand how the phones work. This is the perfect companion for the language challenged and technology challenged."

Roden has seen the success of companies such as Premier Technologies and Smart Talk in the US, which both record annual sales of some $700 million (£503 million). He believes the Americans have never managed to replicate their US success with phonecards in Europe because of the obstacles they face. "The Americans land in England but they are not good at moving further into Europe."

The obstacles are threefold, he says. "There is no single language in Europe, no single currency and there is the regulatory regime. "

Roden believes he is well-positioned to cash in where the Americans have lost out. His experience in Esat armed him with the skills to run his own company. "I was always interested in telecoms as a brand, rather than a utility."

In Esat, he says, he and Denis O'Brien, Esat chairman and co-founder, approached telecoms in a different way. "We attacked it as a consumer good, recruiting a direct sales force, using mass advertising and focused on strong customer relations. "

He believes the fact than neither he nor O'Brien had any background in telecoms helped them. Roden was seen as O'Brien's right-hand man so there was some surprise when he decided to leave. Roden is still a non-executive director of Esat and remains close to O'Brien. They go running in Wicklow every weekend, he says.

"Working in Esat was a fantastic experience," he says. He learned a lot working with O'Brien and with Lesley Buckley a management consultant who plays an active role in Esat. "They were two very strong influences on my six years in Esat."

He says he could not have established Torc without having worked with O'Brien. "It certainly gave me a road map on how to start an organisation from scratch and build a business." He says O'Brien is "an unbelievable operator".

Roden says many people feel success has just come O'Brien's way, or he just happened to come across opportunities and succeeded. However, Roden says that it is just the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of the effort that was put into securing those opportunities.

Winning the GSM (second mobile phone) licence, was "an incredibly deserved reward" for Esat "given the amount of effort that was put into winning it". Regarding the controversy over Esat winning the licence, he says much of it was generated by the losing consortiums. "There was an assumption that the Motorola-led consortium would win the mobile licence, because of their international reputation and their juggernaut approach to telecoms worldwide."

However, Roden says Esat had begun its bid for the licence three years before Motorola even knew where Ireland was. "Anybody who has seen the documentation knows that the best bidder won."

He says Esat used a team approach in taking on Telecom Eireann, beating it at its own business and expanding the opportunity.

He is scathing of Telecom which, he says, lowers the costs of services where there is competition and keeps them high where there is none.

He says everyone should be able to compete for all services including the residential market where Telecom has a derogation until 2000. "Let the market decide," he says.

Roden previously worked in Price Waterhouse Strategy Consulting Group in London. He has an MBA from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied for a year. It was, he says, very hard work, but very rewarding. He says Europeans are more used to dealing with each other, whereas, although it is changing fast, Irish businesses are more used to dealing with other Irish businesses or British businesses.

If he were to sum up what he has learned, it is that so much of business is application, commitment determination and gut instinct all attributes he saw in Esat personnel. He says he has his own management style and approach to structuring Torc, an approach which he believes will be successful.

Like Esat, Torc is a young company. Everybody gets five weeks holiday per year and a bonus. Staff are working from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on average and he says he doesn't want to burn them out.

He also believes that you should not try to drill people, by forcing their noses to the grindstone. And people should be allowed to make mistakes.

"I won't fault anybody for stumbling," he says. "If you are stumbling at least you are going forward."