O2 Ireland
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- The correct title of this article is O2 Ireland. It features superscript or subscript characters that are substituted or omitted because of technical limitations.
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| Telefónica O2 Ireland Limited | |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded | 1996 (as Esat Digifone) |
| Headquarters |  Dublin, Ireland |
| Key people | Danuta Gray (CEO) |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Products | Mobile communications services & related goods |
| Parent | Telefónica |
| Website | http://www.o2.ie/ |
Telefónica O2 Ireland Limited (formerly O2 Communications (Ireland) Limited, and before that, Esat Digifone) or O2 Ireland is a GSM and 3G mobile telecommunications operator in Ireland. It is a subsidiary of Telefónica-owned Telefónica Europe Plc.
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[edit] Products and Services
Currently the company is the second largest mobile phone operator in Ireland with approximately 40% market share or 1.6 million customers (see communications in Ireland). The company's STD prefix is 086, but following the introduction of full number portability, some O2 Irish mobile numbers now feature prefixes starting 087, 085, 089 or 083.
The company provides WAP and GPRS services under the O2 Active brand. In October 2005, O2 Ireland launched a version of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service. The company holds a UMTS licence, and was the third Irish operator to offer 3G services, after Vodafone Ireland and 3 Ireland, offering services in some built-up areas in late 2006.
[edit] Structure
O2 have recently gone through a restructuring phase, seeing it implement a number of cost-cutting measures which involve outsourcing internal divisions to external companies. O2's IT division was outsourced to IBM Ireland, while the Network Operations division was outsourced to BT Ireland (who also run the network operations for 3 Ireland). Finally they have also outsourced their Transmission division to Threefold, an Irish company who recently bought eircom's transmission towers. Thus, in effect, O2 in Ireland is made up of four companies (including O2).
[edit] O2 Broadband
In July 2007, O2 launched its mobile broadband offering in Ireland using HSDPA technology over its 3G network. They provide speeds of up to 3.6 Mbit/s and claim to cover 85% of the population on the 3G network. Parts of Dublin, Galway and Cork city achieve up to 7.2 Mbit/s per second since early 2008 following a recent network upgrade [1]
[edit] Speak easy
Speak easy is the name of O2 Ireland's prepaid service. In 2007 they became the first Irish operator to offer free text messages to all Irish mobile numbers, although it only applied for weekends. However in early 2008 they introduced a new tariff which offers unlimited free text messages to all networks at any time, for life. Unlike similar offers from Vodafone and Meteor the offer is not restricted to messages sent to their own network.
[edit] History
The company was originally a joint venture between Esat Telecom Group, headed up by Denis O'Brien, and Telenor, and was originally known as Esat Digifone. In 1997, it became the second company to be awarded a GSM licence in Ireland. In 2000 BT took over Esat Telecom (at the same time, taking over the Telenor shareholding in Digifone) and later demerged the mobile unit from the fixed line system which is now called BT Ireland. For a brief period the company was simply called Digifone, but following the spin off of mmO2 from BT, the company was renamed O2 Ireland.
[edit] Telefonica takeover
On 31 October 2005 it was announced that Telefónica SA, the Spanish telephone operator, had made a recommended takeover bid for O2 Ireland's parent company, O2 plc. This has been approved by shareholders and O2 was officially purchased in mid February 2006. The O2 brand is now used in several countries for Telefónica's mobile opearations outside Spain and Latin America, where Telefónica mobile is known as movistar. Current rebranding into O2 is currently taking place, enabling Telefónica to create a global O2 brand. Countries where O2 are present is the United Kingdom, Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia
[edit] Criticisms
In May 2007, O2 Ireland management announced that the entire O2 Ireland technical staff were to be outsourced to a single Managed Service Provider. [2]
As of November 2007 this does not appear to have happened but it has begun to happen beacuse as of April 2008 IBM will the be outscourced technical team for O2.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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