Eircom's competitors are biding their time to see what impact the change of ownership will have on the market's dominant player and the industry.

Tom Hickey, chairman of the alternative telecom operators' group, Alto, said it would wait to see if the handover to Babcock & Brown would change the company's attitude to regulation and competition.

"The change in ownership really makes no difference to competition," he said. "It has made no difference so far, so we're going to wait and see if the new owners come in with a new attitude."

Eircom owns most of the Republic's fixed-line telecoms network but has doggedly resisted attempts by the industry regulator, ComReg, to force it to open this up to competition.

The key elements are the exchanges. Eircom's competitors want to get into these so they can hook up their own equipment to customers' telephones and PCs and provide them with their own products and services. They currently have limited access but say this is not enough.

Without this access, competitors can only resell Eircom's services, which they buy from the big player at wholesale rates.

Last year Eircom sought and won a High Court order preventing ComReg from forcing it to open up the exchanges. The company came back with alternative proposals in the autumn but the rest of the industry claimed these did not go far enough.

The row has been blamed for holding up the development of broadband.

Mr Hickey said last night it was possible that Babcock & Brown could split the retail and wholesale arms of the company, open up the exchanges and develop the wholesale side as a utility. He added that incoming Eircom chairman, Pierre Danon, had indicated that it could take this approach.

"It's probably too early to say, but the signals they have been giving have been that they would be more open, so we're hopeful," he said.