The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has officially opened Esat Telecom's new two million network management centre at Dundrum Business Park in Dublin. The facility will monitor call traffic on Esat Telecom's local, national and international fibre optic network on a 24-hour basis. It comprises a series of video walls which allow operators to continually monitor and immediately identify any network faults.

A high-powered switch, the DMS 100, installed at the centre and capable of carrying a quarter of a million calls per hour, will become operational by the end of August. The capacity of this switch will be increased by 50 per cent by December 1998 to cater for increased service demand.