Consumers will have to wait at least another month before they can rent a phone line from any of Eircom's rivals, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.

The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) confirmed a further delay to its single-billing scheme yesterday.

The scheme - designed to enable competing telecoms operators to offer line rental as well as call services - would enable people to sign up with Eircom rivals and continue to receive one bill for all telecoms services.

In a statement, ComReg said that achieving agreement on the various stages of development had been slower than expected. It said it had decided to "delay slightly" the new product until June 2nd.

This is the second consecutive delay to the process, which was supposed to be introduced last January. Rival operators criticised the delay last night and said they believed Eircom was unnecessarily delaying the process.

The Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators (ALTO) said Eircom was proposing a manual system and rival operators were concerned that if Eircom operated a manual system of transferring customers who requested to change to an alternative operator, it would limit the amount of orders it could process.

But Eircom rejected the response of rival operators yesterday and said it had been working constructively with ComReg to move the agenda on.

A separate issue delaying the scheme is whether Eircom can delete customers' numbers from a national number database used for directory inquiries if they defect to alternative operators.