Before people lose the run of themselves entirely and start thinking that BT's purchase of Esat is anything for consumers or businesses to get overly excited about - or that Esat is anything to get overly excited about, unless you're a shareholder - it's worth remembering a number of points.
First, that BT is hardly a sexy white knight. Indeed, BT is like a late-vintage, wheezy Roger Moore pretending to be an eminently beddable Bond. After all, BT is a former state-run, old-style telecoms company and has conformed to every stereotype associated with such creatures. Only with glacial speed and in the face of upstart competition has BT introduced new Net-related services in the UK.
About the most exciting thing the company has done in the past two years is finally start a trial of ADSL, a high-speed Net access technology that can run over standard copper phone lines. But the trial has been narrow in scope and BT has restricted some standard elements of Internet services like online gaming and the hugely popular chat program ICQ (see the UK's "sarcastic tech update" Need to Know at www.ntk.net, January 14th edition - or just do a search on BT on their site for many tales of woe).
Indeed, our own home-grown slow-mover Eircom introduced special Internet access rates well over a year ago, while BT continued to charge full daytime call rates to Net users in the UK.
BT said it snatched up Esat because it was particularly interested in youthful telecoms companies that are challengers to incumbents in given markets. This implies fast-thinking and fast-moving aggressors that, in particular, get the Net. But that hardly describes Esat. Yes, Esat opened up the Irish market to competition and forced changes - but any company granted the second licence here would have done the same.
Esat essentially just gave us a duopoly. While complaining loudly about Eircom (and there was plenty to complain about), Esat only shaved small amounts off costs and introduced obvious competitive elements like persecond billing. The fact that everyone in the State didn't flee Eircom's embrace for the supposedly softer bosom of Esat underscores the point that for many, the savings were not significant enough to outweigh the bother of making the change.
Esat also did not get the Net, but managed to make up for this shortcoming by gradually buying in the experience of others - purchasing EUNet Ireland gave it a base of business Net customers, and the IOL/PostGem acquisition greatly expanded its consumer base and added enough additional business clients that Esat could claim to be - through no particular networking expertise of its own - the Republic's leading business Internet service provider.
That claim appeared over and over in coverage of the Esat sale and it is clear from BT's comments that Esat's bought-in Net and networks profile, courtesy of IOL/PostGem, was a compelling element of the purchase. Without them, Esat really would have had only Digifone to flaunt.
BT's much greater size and might compared to Eircom will bring benefits by forcing change. But like Esat before it, BT - judging by the British experience - is likely only to bring changes, not radical or exciting innovations. For real change, especially in the Internet realm, I'd put my money on the new wireless operators and the cable companies.
In the meantime, we'll have to hope for a sexy global telecoms player with some serious Internet clout and big bandwidth to hit on Eircom.
ON a lighter note, if you foolishly thought the words sexy and geek could not possibly appear together in the same context, think again.
Woman.com, a website based in Silicon Valley, has put up its list of the Valley's 10 most eligible men, all tech entrepreneurs (well, there's also one venture capitalist for the braver women out there, and one tech writer).
Apparently when the site requested nominations, many geek guys started flogging themselves, and some nominations came from their mothers. Not surprising, given that men outnumber women in the region and work so hard that dating is an exotic activity.
The choices on Women.com are all pretty obscure unless you live in Silicon Valley, but they include likely lads from VA Linux Systems, Epinions.com, Epicentric, Beyond.com, GetThere.com, TheStreet.com, XUMA and Sun Microsystems.
My own vote goes to the candidate from TheStreet.com, tech finance writer Adam Lashinsky, but then, I've always liked a guy who understands his options. Maybe The Irish Times should do the same for the Irish crowd - at the moment, only Trintech millionaire Cyril Maguire is officially an eligible bachelor, and that's only because the cover of Business Plus magazine told us all so. Any nominees for an Irish list? Send 'em in.
klillington@irish-times.ie
