After a two-year delay, High Court and Supreme Court hearings and an estimated £100 million (€127 million) in lost revenue, Meteor was finally issued with the third mobile phone licence yesterday.
The telecoms company, which under the terms of the licence, has to be up and running within nine months, is hoping to beat that target to enable it to cash in on the lucrative Christmas market with "a high quality service".
Meteor is refusing to disclose precise details of this service and chief operations officer, Mr Peter Quinn, would only say that it will be competing on both price and services.
"We've had two years to work on this and we want to keep a few things in the bag for the launch. We do plan on coming out with compelling offers that will make a difference," he said.
Mr Quinn contended that consumers have already benefited from the introduction of a third mobile network. He says that Eircell and Esat Digifone's recent price drops are directly related to last month's Supreme Court decision releasing the third mobile phone licence into the market.
Meteor is investing £200 million in its first year of operation here, £10 million of which has already been spent on the licence. It has a benchmark of 100,000 subscribers which it hopes to win over as soon as possible in its first year in business.
Under the terms of the licence, Meteor must meet 80 per cent population coverage within two years and hopes to be well on the way to that by Christmas.
The company has been developing its network and infrastructure over the last two years and has made considerable progress on site acquisition.
It has a number of co-location agreements in place including a master agreement with ESB as well as arrangements with Coillte and Iarnrod Eireann. It is also in talks with the two incumbents.
Meteor has also expressed an interest in applying for a third generation or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) licence.
Telecoms Regulator, Ms Etain Doyle, has indicated that UMTS would be introduced in early 2002. She said it has not yet been decided how many licences will be given out and it is still not clear how they will be sold.
Meteor is a consortium of US and Irish investors. Irish-owned RF Communications has a 30 per cent stake in the company, USbased Western Wireless is the majority shareholder with 60 per cent and the remaining 10 per cent is owned by US Walter Group Consultancy.
