EIRCOM HAS suffered two high-profile defections from its senior management team in the past week.

Andrew Haire is stepping down as corporate affairs director, having only taken on the role in June. The departure of Haire, an American who worked for the telecoms regulator in Singapore before joining Eircom, was announced internally on Wednesday and took staff by surprise.

In addition, Conor Carmody, director of eMobile, a virtual operator launched in September by Eircom, has also left the business.

Mr Carmody previously held a senior role with Meteor, Eircom’s other mobile phone division. His departure was announced to staff last Friday.

Mr Carmody helped launch eMobile on September 29th with chief executive Paul Donovan.

A spokesman for Eircom said Haire and Carmody were leaving for “personal reasons”.

Eircom staff were yesterday updated by management on the success of eMobile.

The company said eMobile has enjoyed a “total net growth” of 20 per cent from October to November.

“This constitutes a 146 per cent consumer growth month on month, with 24 per cent of our consumer base in Dublin,” an internal communication stated.

Half of eMobile’s consumer subscribers are bill pay customers.

“Our pre-pay customers are enjoying the benefits of scheduled top up with 60 per cent of eMobile customers topping up through scheduled top up in November, thus adding to a strong average revenue per user,” the communication added.

Meanwhile, Eircom is preparing to turn up the heat on its broadband competitors by offering residential customers 24 megabyte (MB) speeds – three times faster than what they can currently receive.

Eircom intends to launch the faster broadband service on December 20th as part of its rollout of a so-called “next generation network” (NGN).

At present, 133 Eircom exchanges have been upgraded to support NGN. This will enable one million phone lines to receive the faster internet service by Christmas.

About 250 exchanges will have been upgraded by the end of 2011.

Eircom will charge customers €47.99 a month for the 24MB service on a stand-alone basis. Customers also have to pay a line rental fee.

It will also be available as part of a bundle of services that will include fixed-line telephony and eMobile services.

Eircom currently offers a top speed of 8MB to residential customers, costing €24.99 a month.

Eircom has 500,000 retail broadband customers but has faced greater competition in the past two years from rivals, particularly cable TV group UPC.

At the end of September, UPC had 184,700 broadband customers – an year-on-year increase of 50,000.

Most UPC customers buy broadband as a bundle with digital TV and telephony. UPC offers a 30MB product for €42 a month.