"We commenced our 'tripleplay' roll-out in July 2006 and continue to expand our portfolio of multi-play services across our NTL and Chorus networks, " Dunn said. "UPC is to become a quad play provider."

The combined company, which loses the right to use the NTL brand at the end of the first quarter of 2007, is expected to relaunch under the UPC brand in the new year. UPC will likely seek to resell mobile services from one of the existing networks under its own brand name.

The revelation follows the announcement last week that Tesco Ireland will offer Tesco Mobile beginning in summer 2007 in a deal with O2 that will see Tesco become a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), under the 089 prefix.

Vodafone and Eircom are potential partners for UPC, as is O2. The O2 deal with Tesco is understood to be locked in for five years and is an exclusive arrangement only in the supermarket category, preventing O2 from making similar deals with Superquinn, Eurospar, Supervalu or Dunnes Stores but imposing no restrictions on deals it may seek with companies in other sectors. Dunn also responded to a storm of criticism directed at the company last week after it announced it would impose a Euro7.68 fee on bills not paid in 14 days and an extra Euro2 a month charge for customers not paying by direct debit. NTL customers have also complained in recent days about delays in service.

Dunn said UPC this month switched to new systems that will help integrate the NTL and Chorus platforms, predicting that the service would improve as wrinkles in the new system are ironed out.

On Friday the company closed its Waterford call centre with the loss of 135 jobs. The company is concentrating its call centre operations in the Limerick area.

UPC plans an aggressive marketing campaign in the new year to push its 'triple play' offering. Dunn has said the company plans to have its broadband available to 700,000 homes by the end of 2008.