TELECOMS experts have called for immediate Government action to bring more competition to the market -- to cut the cost of phoneline rentals.

The Association for Alternative Operators in the Communications Market said that a report by the EU Commission showed there was a need for investment in the national phone network.

The report Towards a Single European Telecoms Market said operators paid high prices to use the phone network which affected competition and prices.

Hindered

"The report has shown that competition is clearly being hindered," commented Ronan Lupton, Chairman of ALTO, a group established to represent the interests of new operators entering Ireland's telecoms market. "It is obvious that the efforts to privatise the national telecommunications network with any level of stability have failed.

"We call on the Government to urgently consider nationalising or investing in the national phone network to ensure that all operators have unfettered access to it in reaction to a report issued today by the EU Commission on the state of the EU Telecom sector," he added.

Mr Lupton noted that the revelations in the report come a week after another report from ComReg on the Eircom-managed network which showed a continued decline in network quality.

"This is despite line rental charges increasing to become the highest in the EU," he said.

The EU report showed Irish average monthly charges for line rental are €25, more than three times that of Finland.

Competitors are also suffering from "expensive and unreliable" access to Eircom's broadband network, according to the European Commission's performance report on the EU's single telecoms market.

Failures

The report says service failures for alternative operators using these lines "have made life even harder for them".

"It is long past time that strong legislation be brought in to direct the Commission for Communications Regulation to reduce line rental prices to the EU average," said Eamonn Wallace of IrelandOffline, a campaign group for cheaper telecommunications access in Ireland.

A spokesman for the commission said the "predominant reason" for the high cost of landlines in Ireland was that 40pc of Irish people live in rural areas, compared to an average of 15pc across the EU, making connections more expensive.