Eir (telecommunications)

Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, is a fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland, and a former state-owned monopolist. It is the largest telecommunications operator in the Republic, with a division to service the business & corporate telecom markets in Northern Ireland and Britain. As Bord Telecom Éireann, the company was state-owned until 1999, when it was floated on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.

Eir operates the fixed-line telephone network, an LTE (4G), HSDPA (3G) and GSM/EDGE (2.75G) mobile telephone network Meteor (acquired from AllTel (Western Wireless) in 2005) and acts as an internet service provider (ISP) eircom.net. As of Q1 2013, Eircom had 54% market share of fixed voice lines; 40% market share of fixed broadband; 11% of mobile broadband; and 17% of mobile. By late 2007 Eircom added their 500,000th DSL subscriber but broadband share may have fallen to 44% due to growth of fixed wireless, cable and fibre services.

Its main competitors are Virgin Media Ireland (which operates a cable TV & Broadband network), Vodafone Ireland (which bought BT Ireland's residential customer base on 22 July 2009 and is accessed through Eir's network and BT Ireland's fibre), Imagine Communications (Irish Broadband & Gaelic Telecom) and Magnet Networks and Smart Telecom, with a mix of LLU/GLUMP from Eircom and fibre.