ALTO requests that eircom clarify NGN plans

The chairman of Ireland’s association for alternative operators in the communications market (ALTO), Liam O’Halloran, has asked that former monopoly operator eircom provide detailed plans of its proposed next generation network (NGN) rollout. The ALTO chairman’s statement comes in the wake of eircom’s recent announcement that it has mothballed plans to split its network and its mobile and customer divisions into separate companies. O’Halloran is concerned that the continuing uncertainty over eircom’s future is delaying the rollout of the Republic’s NGN broadband network. Online news portal ENN quotes the ALTO spokesman as saying: ‘The NGN rollout and the rate and extent of it, is going to be tied to whatever deal [eircom] can get from the government and the regulator in terms of their plans to separate the company … In a testing business environment competition must not be stifled and investment stalled, so we need to have definite certainty from eircom, rather than indications of what might happen.’