It's a funny old world, here we are in the throes of a (yet another) wet Irish summer and our Telecommunications Industry is being changed by what has happened in sunny Australia.

Yes folks, Mr Babcock and Mr Brown have decided that the corporate abuse they have heaped upon Eircom is finally at an end and they are selling it on to Singapore Technologies Telemedia so that they can have a turn running Eircom. Actually, they really have no choice as Babcock and Brown, the Australian company that owned Eircom, are no longer a functioning company having collapsed in a flurry of flailing debt-laden limbs during the present economic crisis.

B&B bought Eircom for €2.4billion in 2006, they have sold it for €130million. However, this is no bargain as Eircom now carries with it over €3bn in debt since successive owners have stripped assets and generally been a trifle tardy with Ireland's incumbent operator. Gone are the heady state-funded days when Eircom had no competition and owned Eircell, then the only mobile operator in Ireland but since sold to Vodafone in another fit of asset-stripping by another group of previous owners, the corporate gloss of Eircom has become quite tarnished and dull.

However, unlike Babcock and Brown, STT actually know something about the telecommunications industry so maybe, just maybe, the tide is turning and we can look forward to an era of relative stability in the Telecoms field in Ireland. Let's hope so as Ireland's future prosperity will depend on good, ubiquitous and affordable data communications going forward.

While on the subject of data comms. Rathmore and Milltown have now been broadband enabled for a few weeks but still no sign of it in Headford though I have it on good authority that the work at the exchange had been completed as far back as March this year. So I still turn off the lights at night with the silent mantra "God bless O2" as broadband is a necessity in modern business.