Not a good time for KPN and Telia to be looking for buyers - trade or otherwise - for their combined 35 per cent stake in Eircom, with potential investors in telecom stocks having a veritable feast of alternative investments in the weeks and months ahead.

There are at least eight other telecom investment opportunities to consider, including Telia itself and possibly a renewed flotation of KPN's mobile business.onica. That merger , of course, has just been abandoned. with the two big Spanish shareholders in Telefonica, BBVA and La Caixa, not prepared to consider a merged company where the Dutch government would own 17 per cent.

Telia is going ahead with an initial public offering which will see up to €12 billion (£9.45 billion) of stock being offered. Add in Turkcell in Turkey, Telecom Egypt, Tiscal in Italy, the latest Deutsche Telekom tranche as well as Telenor and there's a lot of telco paper coming on the market over the next few months with which any offering of Eircom will have to compete.

That suggests KPN and Telia might have to bide their time and hope for a trade buyer to emerge. That would be good news for Eircom shareholders as any trade buyer would be expected to pay more than any secondary offering of shares might fetch in a market pretty well saturated with existing or expected telco paper.

Whether Eircom has any attractions for a trade investor is debatable, however, and shareholders may have to sit and suffer for some time yet.