BT Ireland senior manager Gary Cobain is moving to Australia to join Denis O’Brien’s Digicel.

Digicel already has businesses in the South Pacific, which are supported by an operation in Australia.

It has operations in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Nauru, which are close, in relative terms, to Australia.

Cobain is a member of BT Ireland’s senior management team and has had various roles there down through the years, including running the Cara technology services business when BT took it over in 2005.

BT Ireland is the direct descendant of Esat, the business that O’Brien founded in the mid-1990s to bid for the State’s second mobile phone licence.

BT bought Esat from O’Brien 12 years ago and it was eventually rebranded.

Digicel recently reported that first-half revenues in 2012 hit $1.38 billion, while earnings before interest, tax and write-offs increased 10 per cent to $577 million.