Products and services
Meteor initially started out as a value-driven mobile service offering customers basic mobile voice telephony and text-based SMS services to mostly Pay and Go customers.
The company offered mobile services, such as MMS, GPRS, EDGE and 3G through their Pay as You Go and Bill Pay brands. In 2009 Meteor launched Bill Pay Lite. It offered short contracts and low monthly fees.
In February 2009 Meteor launched Broadband To Go, its mobile broadband offering. The service offered internet at HSDPA speeds and was available to Bill Pay and Pay as You Go customers. There were 3 different products on bill pay, with download allowances of 5GB, 10GB and 15GB. The Pay as you go service offered 7.5GB.
Meteor Mobile Internet was the company's mobile internet based services, offering access to the mobile internet, realtones, full track music downloads and other content available for download to existing customers.
Meteor Business was the company's division focusing on business customers. They offered services such as Mobile Email using Visto technology, [8] Microsoft Windows Mobile Email and other products.
4G - LTE
Meteor (along with its sister company, eMobile), provided 4G. 4G was originally only available in Dublin, Carlow, Cork, Clare, Limerick, Galway, Mullingar, Athlone and Dundalk. Meteor claimed to have 90% 4G population coverage across Ireland and had planned to cover the country with 90% geographic coverage by April 2017.
Network
Meteor previously had a national roaming agreement with O2 Ireland which meant that, only on the westernmost areas of Ireland (where Meteor did not have coverage), a Meteor customer could use O2 Ireland's network at no extra charge. This deal expired in February 2007. The final arrangement allowed Meteor customers access to the Vodafone Ireland network on the western-seabord of Ireland.
Like all other Irish operators, Meteor held a UMTS licence. They had offered nationwide 3G services from 2007, but the Meteor 3G network was available to 33% of the Irish population (this included the four cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and other regional centres) with very limited geographic coverage, around 15% by 2013.
They also offered GPRS (2.5G) and EDGE (2.75G) services. Their parent eir won a bid for the final 3G licence, when their parent, eircom accepted this, because, Smart Mobile Ltd. was unable to pay for the license. Meteor continued to add EDGE capabilities to their then existing 2G network. In order to comply with the terms of licence, Meteor launched stage one (10% 3G population coverage area) from their UMTS/HSDPA Network on the end of October 2007, with the second phase having gone live to customers at the end of September 2008.
Meteor's network also offered 4G services, which covered 96% of the Irish population. Meteor had Ireland's second largest 4G footprint after Vodafone.
The legal transfer of licence for UMTS services from Meteor's parent, eircom, was officially authorised on 26 June 2008 taking effect the following day. [10]
Telecommunications in Ireland operate in a regulated competitive market that provides customers with a wide array of advanced digital services. This article explores Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure including: fixed and mobile networks, The voice, data and Internet services, cable television, developments in next-generation networks and broadcast networks for radio and television.
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP, UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators.
3G is the third generation of cellular network technology, representing a significant advancement over 2G, particularly in terms of data transfer speeds and mobile internet capabilities. While 2G networks, including technologies such as GPRS and EDGE, supported limited data services, 3G introduced significantly higher-speed mobile internet, improved voice quality, and enhanced multimedia capabilities. Although 3G enabled faster data speeds compared to 2G, it provided moderate internet speeds suitable for general browsing and multimedia content, but not for high-definition or data-intensive applications. Based on the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) specifications established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3G supports a range of services, including voice telephony, mobile internet access, video calls, video streaming, and mobile TV.
Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, is a large fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. The company, which is currently incorporated in Jersey, traces its origins to Ireland's former state-owned monopoly telecommunication provider Telecom Éireann and its predecessors, P&T and before the foundation of the state, the telecommunications division of the GPO. It remains the largest telecommunications operator in Ireland and has overseas operations focused on the business and corporate telecom markets in the United Kingdom. The company was in majority state ownership until 1999, when it was privatised through a flotation on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.
Vodafone Ireland Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group, is a mobile phone network, broadband and TV provider in Ireland. It was created when the Vodafone Group bought Eircell, the mobile arm of Telecom Éireann. As of September 2019, Vodafone has 26% of broadband subscribers, and 43% of mobile phone subscribers.
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Smart Telecom (AIM:SMR) was an Irish telecom operator that started as a phone card seller. It was also the third largest provider of cost-sensitive telecom services sector in Ireland, behind the incumbent operators eircom and BT Ireland. It had an estimated 50,000 land-line customers and 18,000 broadband subscribers.
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Xfera Móviles, S.A.U., d/b/a Yoigo, is the fourth-largest mobile network operator in Spain and a subsidiary of the Spanish telecommunications company Grupo MásMóvil, a subsidiary of MásOrange. Yoigo has a licence and its own cellular network for GSM/2G, UMTS/3G and LTE/4G technologies, and a national roaming agreement for usage of the 2G, 3G and 4G networks of Orange and Movistar.
The Claro Company, or simply Claro, is a Latin American telecommunications company, part of América Móvil, a Mexican telecom group. Claro serves customers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. Its Mexican operations are branded as Claro Mexico. The company's name means "bright," "clear," and also "of course," in both Portuguese and Spanish.
Yettel Bulgaria is the largest mobile network and the third largest fixed telecommunications company in Bulgaria. The company was founded under the name "Cosmo Bulgaria Mobile" in 2001 by OTE and operated under the brand name "Globul" until 2014. In 2013 it was bought by Telenor and changed its name. In August 2018, the company was acquired by PPF, a Czech private investment fund. The company continued to use the Telenor brand until 1 March 2022, when it was renamed to Yettel Bulgaria. In February 2024, the company was acquired by e& (Etisalat), and the merger was approved by Bulgaria's competition watchdog. However the branding of Yettel has not yet been changed.
Iowa Wireless Services LLC, doing business as iWireless, was a mobile network operator founded in 1997, not related to Kroger's service. Headquartered in Urbandale, Iowa, iWireless was a partnership between T-Mobile US, Inc. and Iowa Network Services Inc. iWireless owned licenses to operate GSM cellular networks in the PCS-1900 and AWS-1700 radio frequency bands covering Iowa, southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois. iWireless had over 250 full-service company stores and authorized dealers across Iowa, western Illinois, and eastern Nebraska. iWireless was acquired in full by T-Mobile and on October 1, 2018, the service was shut down as customers were encouraged to migrate to T-Mobile plans.
Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, doing business as SLT-MOBITEL, is the national telecommunications services provider in Sri Lanka and one of the country's largest companies with an annual turnover in excess of Rs 100 billion. The company provides domestic and corporate services which include fixed and wireless telephony, Internet access and IT services to domestic, public and business sector customers. As of 2018 SLT-MOBITEL was Sri Lanka's second largest mobile network operator with over 7.9 million subscribers.
Tesco Mobile Limited is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. It is operated by British retailer Tesco, using the network O2 as its carrier except in Ireland, where the network operator is Three Ireland.
One Hungary is a Hungarian telecommunications service provider. It started operations in 1999 as a mobile network operator after securing the third GSM 900/1800 MHz licence of the country and it was the first provider operating in the DCS-1800 band in Hungary.
Hutchison 3G Enterprises S.A.R.L., commonly known as Hutchison 3G and trading as 3 (Three), is the owner of a brand name that operates several mobile phone networks and broadband Internet providers in Hong Kong, Macau, Austria, Denmark, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
MagtiCom, LLC. is a Georgian telecoms company founded on February 12, 1996 by Dr. George (Gia) Jokhtaberidze. On September 22, 1997, the Company made the first commercial call from its mobile network. The services offered by MagtiCom involve as follows: mobile telephony; mobile internet - embracing different technologies of mobile network development, such as: 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 4.5G and 5G; Cable fixed telephony (VoIP); internet television (IPTV) and fiber-optic internet. Since 2016 MagtiCom started to provide IPTV, VoIP and fiber-optic internet.
2degrees is a New Zealand full service telecommunications provider. It's the third-largest wireless carrier in New Zealand, with 1.3 million subscribers as of July 2015. Since launching its mobile network, 2degrees broke up the New Zealand mobile duopoly halving the price of Prepay overnight. 2degrees offers services across mobile, broadband, business and power.
3G mobile telephony was relatively slow to be adopted globally. In some instances, 3G networks do not use the same radio frequencies as 2G so mobile operators must build entirely new networks and license entirely new frequencies, especially so to achieve high data transmission rates. Other delays were due to the expenses of upgrading transmission hardware, especially for UMTS, whose deployment required the replacement of most broadcast towers. Due to these issues and difficulties with deployment, many carriers delayed acquisition of these updated capabilities.
Three Ireland (Hutchison) Limited, commonly known as 3 Ireland or Three Ireland, is a telecommunications and Internet service provider operating in Ireland as a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings, operating under the global Three brand. The company launched in July 2005 and provides 2G GSM, 3G UMTS, 4G LTE and 5G NR mobile phone services. Three's former holding company, Hutchison Whampoa, acquired O2 Ireland in June 2013, and the company was fully merged into the operations of Three Ireland in March 2015.
