British mobile operator Orange will invest £620 million and create 700 jobs over the next five years if it wins Ireland's third mobile phone licence. The company has also promised that calls between Ireland and Britain will be charged at the local mobile rate, resulting in significant savings for customers.

The company, which is one of just two bidders for the licence, said Orange was considering Ireland for locating a call centre, which would employ 200 people and handle queries from its European subscribers. Orange says if its bid is successful it will roll out its service next April, ahead of the target date laid down in the competition. This specifies that the winning company must provide coverage to one-third of the population within two years of being awarded the licence in June. Orange said it had approached current mobile operators Eircell and Esat Digifone about sharing infrastructure and was confident it could do a deal with them.

However, Orange maintains that, if it cannot reach agreement, it will still be able to press ahead using its own infrastructure. Orange will build a network using a system known as the DCS 1800, which broadcasts at a higher frequency than the GSM system. The company would not say how much coverage it would provide from day one, but said, when it launched in Britain, it covered 50 per cent of the population. By the end of 2001 it said it would achieve over 90 per cent coverage.

Mr Hans Snook, managing director of Orange, said the company would stress value for money, customer care and innovation. When pressed whether Orange would offer cheaper tariffs, he said there was more to value than just price.

He said the Irish market would demand a service tailored to Irish customers' needs. He would not divulge what share of the market Orange would target initially, but it eventually hoped to achieve about 30 per cent.

Mr Snook said Orange remained open to the possibility of bringing in an Irish partner, but probably not from a financial viewpoint. "We won't take in an Irish partner just to make us look Irish," he said.

Mr Graham Howe, group financial director, said Orange, which is valued at £5 billion would probably seek a listing on the Dublin Exchange, but not for about three years.

Orange now has more than 1.3 million customers. The network claims to be the biggest in Britain. Earlier this week it launched its service in Northern Ireland and is available to 80 per cent of the population there.

Meanwhile, Mr Snook also moved to clarify the position of Hutchinson Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based communications group, and recent newspaper reports which cited it as a shareholder in the competing parties for the licence. He said Hutchinson was a 49 per cent shareholder in Orange plc. It is a 19 per cent shareholder in Western Wireless PCS, a subsidiary of Western Wireless, which is the largest bidder in the Meteor consortium - the second bidder for the licence. Mr Snook is on the board of Western Wireless PCS and said he was appointed to advise it on developing cellular operations in the US. He said there was no conflict.

Privately some Orange executives expressed surprise that Western had pitched for the licence. The first they had heard of Western's involvement was when the applicants' names were published.