BT Ireland

BT Communications (Ireland) Limited is a telecommunications and internet company in Ireland. It is a subsidiary of BT Group plc.

History

Esat Telecom

The company was founded in 1990 by a constortium headed by business magnate Denis O'Brien and was originally known as Esat Telecom. The name Esat, said to be an abbreviation of "Éireann Satellite" and connected to O'Briens bid for Ireland's communications satellite licence under the 1977 ITU frequency plans, would become much more associated with telcommunications in Ireland, however.

Esat Telecom applied a number of times for a telecommunications licence to the Department of Communications and was finally granted a limited one in March 1993. The company officially launched its services on 20 April 1994. It was the first domestic competitor to Bord Telecom Éireann (now Eircom) and, after initially reselling leased lines from that company, used "autodiallers" to route calls onto its network.

These devices proved controversial, with Telecom threatening legal action and the Department contending that these were a breach of Esat's limited licence. However, an Esat complaint to the European Commission was upheld, and eventually in 1997, the new Director of Telecommunications Regulation (now called ComReg) regularised Esat's position by ordering Telecom Éireann to provide a service to switch calls onto Esat's network.

ESAT-6

ESAT-6, the 6 kDa early secretory antigenic target produced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a secretory protein and potent T cell antigen. It is used in tuberculosis diagnosis by the whole blood interferon γ test QuantiFERON-TB Gold, in conjunction with CFP-10 and TB7.7.

ESAT-6 has been shown to directly bind to the TLR2 receptor, inhibiting downstream signal transduction.

See also

References