Eircom loses business to rivals

Customers abandoned Eircom after the company hiked its line rental for the third time in 12 months.
Rival firms such as Esat BT, Smart Telecom and MCI have scooped up more than 225,000 new customers in the same period.
And the report also showed mobile phone penetration is now at 88 percent of the population, with about 3.5 million handsets in use.
Ireland’s telecoms industry now generates about