IRELAND'S newest telephone company hit the ground running yesterday, announcing hat it already had a significant deal with AT&T and contracts for 15 million minutes of traffic a year. Stentor said at its official inauguration in Dublin that this made it the third largest telecom operator in the State.

The company will target the growing call centre market, and said yesterday that its top of the range technology would help generate new telephone traffic in and out of Ireland. Dozens of international companies have established customer support or telephone sales centres in the Republic in recent months, allowing calls made almost anywhere in the world to be routed here.

Stentor was floated on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in April; the share price has risen from the initial 75p to 157p, and £3.3 million was raised, the company said. Since then, it has signed interconnect agreements with both MCI and AT&T, giving global access to its traffic.

Stentor's network is the Republic's only fully digital network comprising a fibre optic backbone and switching centres in Dublin, Shannon and London, the firm said. Another switching centre, for US calls, will be operational in New York very soon, it added.

The firm's chief executive, Mr Jonathan Friedel, said that the New York switching centre, combined with the company's leased lines across the Atlantic, gave it a price advantage in routeing calls to Irish based call centres from the United States.

The chief benefit of an all digital system, he added, was that it could transmit electronic information such as the caller's telephone number, before the call was even answered. If the company had a computer reference for this customer's number, the system could instantly direct the call to the most appropriate customer service desk, Mr Friedel said.

Stentor's executive director, Mr Patrick Cruise O'Brien, said that because of its switching centres in New York and London, the new firm would likely generate new call centre business in Ireland, rather than merely competing for existing custom.

"But we are absolutely not above poaching call centre business from Telecom Eireann," he added.

He said that the company may expand soon to operate in the North, and could also compete for niches in the British and mainland European telecom markets.

The company has signed three inbound carrier deals, routeing other companies' calls to Ireland. Mr Cruise O'Brien named one of these as the US giant, AT&T, but said that for contractual reasons he could only say that the remaining two were British and European. These agreements guarantee Stentor at least 15 million minutes of traffic each year, he added.

Based in Dublin, the firm expects to employ 30 people by next summer.