Thousands of students who were offered £70 discounts on mobile phones as part of an incentive package for opening an AIB bank account have found the telephones no longer work properly.
The Trium Geo model of mobile phone, manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric and supplied by Esat Digifone, has experienced significant technical difficulties in the Dublin area following an upgrade in Esat's network.
An Esat Digifone spokesman said yesterday the problem was associated with software compatibility problems between the hand-set's software and the software used in the company's network infrastructure.
He said about 12,000 students may have problems with their telephones. Users of another type of Mitsubishi telephone, the Trium Aria, may also have experienced difficulties due to the incompatibility problems, he added.
This could mean some 20,000 subscribers might be affected in total.
Both Mitsubishi and Esat have set up service centres close to Dublin universities to enable customers affected by the problems to obtain a software upgrade.
The Esat spokesman said all customers had been contacted by a short service message sent by the operator to each affected customer. About 4,000-5,000 customers had already been upgraded.
An AIB spokesman said the bank was deeply concerned with the disruption that customers had faced as a result of the unfortunate incident.
A spokesman for Mitsubishi Electric said the matter had now been resolved. However, he said any customer experiencing problems with their mobile phone should contact the company.