With to-ing and fro-ing going on over the terms on which Eircom would open its books to the Australians, a decision on that front seems probable any day.

But terms are likely to be hammered out in painstaking detail.

Eircom chief executive Phil Nolan won't be anxious to pluck the wedding dress out of the wardrobe if there is a real risk of being dumped humiliatingly at the alter again. Being jilted by the Swiss before Christmas was enough for any man. A repeat performance in the season of lovers would be intolerable.

One decision Eircom is finalising is how long the Australians will get to pour over the Eircom numbers.

Most importantly, Eircom will want to know that Babcock & Brown has the money to put where its mouth is.

There is a view among some sceptics that this deal is too big for the Aussies.

Babcock has been happy to send out signals that it is open to a partner, at some stage, and that its plans include splitting the infrastructural side of the business from the retail.

(That is, if it can ease its way around some tricky legal corners, as David Mills might say to his Italian friends. ) If all went swimmingly, and Babcock & Brown did go ahead with a takeover and split the business, one option could be to flog the retail side to a trade buyer.

A mixed bag of predictions going around include the theory that Babcock could hold onto the infrastructure and float the retail business, including mobile wing Meteor, as a highergrowth stock. Alternatively, it might choose to sit on its current stake and gaze at its lovely dividends.

Babcock & Brown won't go hostile, but then neither did Swisscom. And just imagine that the unspeakable happens, that a bid founders and Nolan is left alone and bereft again?

What better man to step into the fray than Esat founder Dennis O'Brien?

With Babcock & Brown sitting on over 28% of Eircom and the Esot on another 21%, O'Brien can do little more than study from the sidelines. But he is understood to be grooming the white horse in case cracks appear in the Australian bid.

This could be good news for the market, because whatever domestic stick O'Brien might get occasionally, he is good at building telecoms businesses. The priorities of Eircom's top managers have been to sweat the assets and to stop the regulator carving chunks out of their turf.

Such determined recalcitrance has worked well for Eircom, but has driven its competitors to distraction (see BT's Danny McLaughlin, page 5) and served consumers badly.

More needs to be done now.

An estimated 1bn needs to be spent by Eircom over five years to move its network into the 21st century. With mobile operation Digicel in fine fettle, O'Brien is well-placed financially and of naturally expansionary inclinations.

The ebullient entrepreneur has been dying to get his hands on Eircom. And surely, in a quiet moment, he must have daydreamed of giving the top Eircom brass five minutes to account for themselves.