The parent of the State's third mobile operator, Meteor, said yesterday it was open to offering a deal for "virtual operators" to use its network but had not had any reasonable commercial requests.
Western Wireless, the US firm which owns Meteor, also said the mobile operator was continuing to perform well in 2005 after an exceptionally strong performance in the last quarter of 2004.
In a conference call with analysts, Brad Horwitz, president of Western Wireless International, said Meteor was open to signing a deal with a "virtual operator" - firms that do not own a mobile network but lease airtime from a company with a licence.
However, he said that Meteor had not yet received any reasonable commercial requests for a deal from virtual operators.
Several firms such as Eircom, Tesco and Carphone Warehouse are understood to be considering entering the mobile market as "virtual operators".
But the firm most eager to enter the market, Eircom, has already said publicly that it hasn't been offered attractive enough terms to sign a deal with a mobile firm.
The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) is proposing to force the two dominant operators, Vodafone and O2, to offer a reasonable commercial deal to "virtual operators". All four operators - Vodafone, O2, Meteor and Hutchison 3G - are opposing ComReg.
Meanwhile, Western Wireless's fourth-quarter results show that Meteor added 88,000 new customers in the fourth quarter of 2004 while Western Wireless's international unit added 204,900 users across Europe, Africa and Latin America.
The US-based Western Wireless said virtually all of Meteor's customers are prepaid users rather than more lucrative contract mobile customers.
Meteor now has 339,600 subscribers compared to O2's subscriber base of 1.516 million and Vodafone's customer base of 1.93 million.
This means Meteor holds 9 per cent of the Irish mobile market against O2's 40 per cent and Vodafone's 51 per cent. The market is worth more than €2 billion in annual revenue.
Mr Horwitz said Meteor's pre-Christmas tariff proposition had proved very successful. He said the national coverage offered by its roaming deal with O2 had also helped the company to add users.
"We continue to view Ireland as the driver of subscriber growth for Western Wireless," he said. "We have had some reduction in growth from the fourth quarter but Meteor is still growing strong."
