The sides meet again in the crucial Eircom League fixture at Tolka Park on Friday night.
This year Eircom expects a 16% improvement in worker productivity, which will translate into a 10% reduction in costs.
Fueled by the booming Irish economy, Eircom has been continually expanding its network.
Eircom decided to give some of its own network-construction employees the option to work for the companies it would outsource to.
Kane is so satisfied with the new partnerships that he is now considering spinning off other Eircom functions in the same manner.
The bad news is that Eircom was stuck with the bloated and inefficient work force that is typical of a government-owned company.
Much of Eircom's work force was unionized and had government-guaranteed job security.
Eircom would cut its work force by outsourcing a lot of what it had been doing, such as digging trenches and laying cables.
When the government sold Eircom, Ireland's dominant telecom provider, into private hands in July 1999, it had a 90% market share of local phone service.
For the partners, forming an alliance with Eircom gives them clout.
First, Eircom examined the businesses, capabilities and cultures of 15 companies and targeted two small Irish companies to take over its construction activities and the Eircom employees.
Eircom is planning to free up capital by selling about half of its 90-odd "depos" the offices where employees report to work, trucks are parked and cable is stored.
"We don't have the ability to force redundancy or force exit, so essentially we had to create a culture with a pull factor, " notes Martin O'Halloran, the project manager for Eircom's access network.
Given the voluntary nature of the project, Eircom selected employees and gave them the choice of working with one of the new ventures, transferring to Eircom's customer service organization or leaving the company entirely.
Eircom formed a wholly owned subsidiary called Service Enterprise Holdings, which took a 35% equity stake in one partner, Telecom Engineering Services, and a 30% equity stake in a new unit of Modern Networks, the other.
The proposal, which was leaked today, has been allegedly introduced by ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators Association), a Brussels-based group representing such companies as Belgacom, SwissCom, Cyta, Eircom and Deutsche Telecom, and will be officially discussed at the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in December.
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