Smart Telecom is to create 130 jobs nationwide as part of a newly created residential sales division, bringing total employment at the company to more than 480 people.
The majority of the new employees will be located in Smart Telecom headquarters in Citywest Business Campus, Co Dublin, while the remainder will be based in new regional sales offices opening in Cork, Dundalk, Waterford, Limerick and Galway. To facilitate the new residential sales team, Smart Telecom has purchased a fleet of 100 new cars from Nissan which will be branded with the Smart Telecom logo.
Oisín Fanning, Smart Telecoms CEO, said the company was on an aggressive growth path. “Smart Telecom is increasing staff levels in a bid to meet the exceptional demand for our services nationwide. Our new sales team will be located in Dublin and in our regional sales offices and they will play a vital role in building our future customer base. We plan to continue to grow substantially throughout 2006 in an effort to achieve our ultimate aim of offering customers all over the country an integrated voice, data and broadband service.”
As well as the jobs announcement, the company revealed that the new residential sales team at Smart Telecom will be the first in Ireland to use state-of-the-art personal digital assistants (PDAs) in a consumer market. The devices will allow residential customers to sign up to Smart Telecom on the spot. PDAs are already widely used in business-to-business markets but Smart Telecom will be the first company in Ireland to introduce the system to the wider consumer market.
In November, Smart raised €55.2m in new funding to facilitate the rollout of its corporate and residential services. Just before Christmas the company raised €56.7m to facilitate the rollout of its 3G and wireless networks after being awarded the fourth 3G licence.
By John Kennedy
