Caring Eircom shows its cold, cold heart

It's been a week of mixed fortunes for Eircom. The pressure to come up with digital services for customers has been reduced with the news that rival NTL has put on hold indefinitely its plans to do the same.

This has brought the latter into conflict with the regulator as the terms of its licence require it to introduce just such a service within the next two months.

Eircom has also struck some measure of agreement with the regulator over unbundling - allowing rivals access to telephone lines between local exchanges and individual homes and businesses.

It might not be out of the woods yet on this issue as the British experience shows that rivals are not prepared to put their money into competing services where they are perceived to operate at a disadvantage to the dominant former State monopoly. The regulator will want to avoid a similar scenario here but at least the two sides are talking.

Surprising then that Eircom, in a week when it was avoiding the endless round of negative publicity, should pull the plug so dramatically on multimedia group Ebeon in which it holds a majority share.

No one suggests it should not exercise its right to determine sound business investment but to walk away - apparently without paying wages due to at least some of the 170 staff - is not conducive to the caring image the telecoms group wants to project.