Business Correspondent Eircom has announced that it will launch a personalized mobile phone brand sometime at the end of this month. Ericom Mobile will hopefully turn out to be a successful launch for the already highly regarded phone company.

The action is targeted at 8,000 small and medium-sized businesses costumers. Although signing up for Ericom Mobile also means receiving distinct paybills, the company is considering offering different facilities that will encourage costumers to sign up for more than one service from those offered by this company.

Still, Ericom has been capable of providing mobile services too up to this point, as it bought mobile phone company Meteor two years ago. The reason for launching another branch of the Ericom company for serving the customer's mobile needs has caused disputes. Furthermore, we still have to wait and see whether the two mobile phone services will coexist for a long time in a profitable manner. "The Meteor brand is not going anywhere" said an Ericom spokesman. Not only that, but ''Meteor is very, very strong and we won't be doing anything to affect the brand."

Meteor has already reached a number of 800,000 customers and has proved to be fairly profitable in the past months. The future is uncertain, as the two mobile phone services now share the same target. Furthermore, Ericom salespeople will now be offering mobile services from Ericon Mobile and not from Meteor, as they have been doing until now.

Eircom is the largest telecommunications operator in Ireland. It offers access to the largest fixed-line network in this country. Not only that, but the company also includes special mobile services, provided until now by Meteor.