INTERNET
Smart Telecom creates 60 jobs
22-11-2004
by Deirdre McArdle
Telecommunications firm Smart Telecom has announced that it is to create 60 new jobs in a new Dublin city centre facility.
The new jobs will be based in a call-centre facility on Baggot Street in Dublin and will bring Smart's Irish employee total to 330. Staff at the call-centre will be making and receiving sales-related calls. The company has two existing facilities in Ireland, in CityWest Business Park in Dublin and Carrigtwohill in Co. Cork.
The operator, which claims it is now the state's third largest telecoms firm after Eircom and Esat BT, has set itself the target of recruiting 70,000 customers by the end of this year. A statement in October suggested the company had 50,000 customers and that it was adding approximately 5,000 new carrier pre-select (CPS) customers per week.
"This is a very exciting time for Smart Telecom. We are increasing the number of staff in a bid to meet the exceptional demand for our services," said Oisin Fanning, CEO of Smart Telecom. "The 60 new employees will be located in our brand new city centre call centre and they will work to help us achieve our target of signing up 70,000 customers by the end of this year. We are very much on track to achieve this target and, in fact, we hope to surpass it."
Smart has made a number of progressive moves in the past year in a bid to develop itself as a full-service telecommunications carrier. At the beginning of November it announced that it had purchased a minority share in a fibre optic broadband network in Dublin. The company also launched single billing, local loop access and access to Ireland's government-owned Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) during the year.
The telecom recently began trading of the UK's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and successfully completed a round of funding worth EUR15 million. Smart says it will use the funding to begin unbundling some local loops at Eircom exchanges which it says will position it to offer a complete telecommunications "one-stop-shop" for customers.
"We're currently in talks with Eircom about unbundling some local loops," said Rhona Bradshaw, marketing co-ordinator with Smart Telecom, speaking with ElectricNews.Net. "By the first quarter of 2005 we would hope to be rolling out some exchanges."
Financially, the company looks to be in good shape despite high spending levels in the past year. In the six months to the end of June the company had turnover of EUR9 million, compared to EUR5.57 million a year earlier.
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