The ancient ‘088’ prefix originally attached to Ireland’s first analogue mobile phones of the Eighties and Nineties has been resurrected to be used with Digiweb’s forthcoming fourth-generation mobile network.
The prefix was awarded to Digiweb following the awarding of a national Wideband Digital Mobile Data Service licence (WDMDS) to the company by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
The company said it will be offering its 4G service countrywide “from the heart of the largest towns and cities, into the deepest rural community”.
Digiweb said it will be in a position to provide its mobile broadband and voice calls service in the next 18 months. However, it would not disclose the exact speeds the new service will perform at.
“Basically 3G is a network for voice, whereas 4G is built for data, which means low latency, very good broadband speeds, and should fully support voice and mobile,” a spokesperson told siliconrepublic.com.
“The problem with 3G is you need to tell the card to connect to a laptop which is nearly like dial-up. With 4G you are automatically connected to the network. This network runs on frequency of 862MHz and enables big cell sizes and it can cover an area of 40km from base station.
“A 4G network is also cheaper to build than a 3G network and because the cost base is lower we can pass savings on to customers,” the Digiweb spokesperson said.
The news comes just a week after Digiweb said it was in the process of creating 200 jobs at a new network centre in Blanchardstown.
By John Kennedy
