Meteor, the US-led consortium bidding for the Republic's third mobile phone licence, yesterday promised it would drive down tariffs and concentrate on attracting first-time customers, if it won the right to run the service.

The executives in charge of the bid also stressed that Meteor would be managed from Ireland, suggesting that its London-based rival, Orange, would have too British an axis.

The consortium made its oral submission to the office of the telecoms regulator on Tuesday. As part of its claim on the licence, Meteor showed how Western Wireless - the US firm that holds a 60 per cent stake in the group - had been creative in its siting of masts in the United States.

This included incorporating masts into the steeples of churches; building masts inside giant synthetic structures that look exactly like hill-top boulders; hiding masts behind bricks; and placing antennae at the top of grain silos.

Meteor also placed strong emphasis on customer care, and said it would set up electronic customer service kiosks throughout the State.

"These kiosks will offer the public a full range of user-friendly services including overnight delivery of mobile phones and other related products, consumer queries using a touch-screen system via the Internet, the sale of prepaid services and customer service bill paying including enquiries," the consortium said.

If awarded the licence, Meteor said it would adopt an aggressive roll-out of the service, launching by next March and completing the network by the end of 2001.

It had already talked to the owners of 400 mast sites in the Dublin area alone and provisionally secured 70 of these.

Meteor said it would spend at least £200 million, and hire a staff of 600.

While it would try to sign national roaming agreements with Eircell and Esat Digifone - which would allow Meteor customers to use the networks when their own was not available - it accepted that the other companies were unlikely to permit such deals.

Mr John Stanton, Western Wireless's chief executive, said that two-thirds of his company's board was made up of Irish-Americans, and that he was delighted to have an involvement with an Irish consortium.

"Ultimately, the thing that differentiates us is the fact that all of the decision-makers will be Irish. Orange will be British," he added.

He also promised that Meteor would drive down the per-minute cost of the service, targeting customers who had never before used a mobile phone and had to pay the bills themselves.

This strategy had worked in the United States, he added, when Western Wireless had doubled the amount of free air time without increasing its prices.

The licence, which involves building a high-density network in the Dublin area with a parallel standard network for the rest of the State, is expected to be awarded at the start of June.