Mr Leslie Harris is wearing the equivalent to the "been there, seen it, built the company" T-shirt in his new role as chief executive of Nevada tele.com.

The seasoned telecoms professional is barely four weeks into the job of running the fledgling telecoms and Internet start-up and already he has plans drawn up for industry domination.

Not world domination. . . he is just focused on the territories of Northern Ireland and the Republic and he has no time to spare. Mr Harris has arrived in the industry at one of the tensest chapters in the island's telecommunications history. The future of the Republic's incumbent telecom provider, Eircom, is anyone's guess while Northern Ireland's lead telecom provider, BT, can only watch from the sidelines while its parent group lurches from one strategy to the next.

Waiting in the dugout is Mr Leslie Harris and the team from Nevada tele.com, the joint venture between Viridian, the Northern Ireland electricity to IT company, and Energis, the UK-based telecom and Internet company.

Its ambition is to offer an all-Ireland telecommunications solution to businesses - North and South - and according to Harris it wants to play in the premier league.

Launched just two years ago, the group made its foray into the Republic last July when it acquired the Dublin-based telecom company Stentor in a £36 million sterling (#60 million) deal.

Since then Nevada tele.com has been quietly getting on with its business. And herein lies the problem, according to industry analysts who have hinted that the company may not have lived up to its early promise. Many argue that Nevada needs to build its profile and that is where Mr Harris steps in.

He has been playing in the premier league for all of his career. He began his working life in the food business but quickly got a taste for innovation and joined BT during the early days of its privatisation.

Initially he was involved in a marketing capacity and then rose through the ranks to hold several senior positions from general manager of products UK, to director of the group's value added services division - a £150 million per annum operation.

Mr Harris was then seconded by BT to help develop a new network in Australia which he successfully did and was appointed joint managing director.

He left the group to join New T&T in Hong Kong where he led the development of new trunk and access networks and saw the business grow to $160 million (#189 million) a year.

More recently he was chairman of Baytree International, a start-up ASP, so what made him decide to become a local rather than global player.

"All telecommunication companies, good telecommunication companies, are local players. That is the difference between succeeding and failing," Mr Harris said.

He is passionate about the opportunities that he believes Northern Ireland and the Republic have to offer. He bases his assumption on previous knowledge of both markets.

Nevada tele.com is based in the Gasworks Site at the bottom of the Ormeau Road in Belfast. It is one of the city's symbols of regeneration, a former wasteland now a thriving business park.

"Northern Ireland has not experienced the radical growth that the Republic has enjoyed but the time has come to make that happen and I am your man to do it.

"There is no reason why Belfast cannot experience the same growth as Dublin - we have the infrastructure and the workforce in place to take advantage of new opportunities," he added. For the last 15 years Mr Harris has had a close association with the Republic. He has a house in Waterford, his wife is from Tipperary and his mother's family was from Cork.

He aims to get involved in the business life of both communities in the North and South. He believes his time with large organisations such as BT has given him a valuable insight into how corporates can lose sight of their customers.

Although he has only been chief executive for four weeks, he believes the company has three basic tasks to fulfil on the island.

"Firstly, we have to serve the community in Northern Ireland and the Republic and identify the business needs in both administrations.

"We have to develop an effective pan-Irish dimension that enables telecommunications and IT to be as effective in Belfast as it is in Dublin, in Cork.

"And finally we have to work closely with development agencies such as the Industrial Development Board and the Industrial Development Authority to position the island as an e-hub," Mr Harris said.

He believes one of the immediate concerns the company faces is the issue of deregulation.

"Governments need to create the right environment to encourage new entrants to compete in the marketplace. We need deregulation in the marketplace and regulators have to act as surrogates for competition.

"Nevada tele.com operates in two different jurisdictions so we have to be aware of different approaches but both governments recognise the fundamental role IT has to play in each country's development," he said.

Mr Harris is critical of the approach of more established telecom companies and of the firms who "buy into existing services without thinking".

"There is a lot of inertia in this industry - companies don't look at new operators because of inertia and operators don't really embrace new approaches because of the `we have always done it this way' school of thought.

"I think it is time for a change - it is time for companies like us to ask customers what they want their telecommunication to do and then we can make it happen.

"That is why the old faces in the world of telecommunications have to sit up and take stock - the BTs, the Eircoms of this world are no longer calling the shots," Mr Harris said.