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Meteor 'mostly on target' for rollout  
Thursday, April 12 2001
by Rory Kelleher


Meteor, Ireland's third mobile network, said on Thursday that it is well ahead of
its targets for sales of mobile phones for the new 085 network.

The company aims to have more than 100,000 subscribers within 12 months of its
launch and a spokesman for Meteor said based on current sales, the target would
easily be exceeded.



But he said the rollout of the company's network, which now covers 60 percent of
the country, was "mostly" on schedule. The rollout has been affected by the
foot and mouth outbreak, with the company unable to access green field sites, so
that targets for some rural areas were slightly behind.



He said Meteor had concentrated its operatives in urban areas and as a result of
the restrictions with foot and mouth.



The launch of the company's business offering will not occur for a few months
until all the gaps in the company's network along main routes between urban areas
are covered.



The spokesman said GPRS is being trialled at the moment by Meteor and services
will be launched after their competitors Esat Digifone and Eircell as expected.



He said many people are missing the point: that GPRS is a platform, not a
product, and that its success would depend on what services are available.



Meteor is looking at what GPRS products will attract customers, and according to
the company, GPRS is not for everybody.



Companies who have introduced limited GPRS services have failed to introduce
different services to attract consumers according to Meteor.



Meteor launched its 085 network on February 22 with a flat rate of IEP.25 a
minute for calls on both pre-paid and contract phones. 



The company also offers a range of WAP services including news, sport and
entertainment.



There were questions over how successful the company would be in what many
analysts considered an already saturated market.



However, Meteor has always maintained that the penetration figures for the Irish
market of 65 percent to 69 percent were dramatically overstated because of the
number of redundant pre-paid phones that have yet to drop out of the figures.



The company said it believed the figures are overstating the penetration rate by
hundreds of thousands because of the number of phones left unused when people
switch from pre-paid to bill phones.