One more thing:Having lost out to Eircom up North recently in the competition for a €100 million civil service telecoms contract, BT Ireland's new boss, Chris Clark, is hoping to repay the favour in the Republic.

"We haven't cracked the public sector here [ in the Republic] yet and that's a real opportunity for us," he said yesterday at a meet-and-greet session with the media.

Clark said that BT's main focus down South would continue to be on large corporations and on securing contracts to manage IT networks for companies.

It already has deals with Bank of Ireland and Dell, among others.

On the residential side, Clark said BT now had 70,000 broadband customers here, making it the number two behind Eircom.

He said BT intended to remain in the consumer telecoms market in the Republic, despite the difficulties Eircom's rivals continue to experience. BT is looking at offering a triple play of fixed line, broadband and television/video, but no move is imminent.

Clark said he was in favour of Eircom's network being split from its retail operations, and he was not too pushed if it was a "functional" (whereby the retail and network operations would be under the same parent) or a full "structural" division.

Nor is he too pushed whether the State's Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) are merged with Eircom's infrastructure, with the Government getting a stake in the enlarged entity, as proposed by Babcock & Brown. "I'm very laissez-faire about MANs and Government involvement . . . separation is the key thing for BT."

Clark ruled out a move for mobile operator Meteor if Babcock & Brown puts it up for sale.