A SHEEP farmer told to pay nearly €30,000 for a phone line in his remote Kerry home has finally been connected to the outside world.

In the end, Tim O'Connor and partner Sabine Lallemand, whose story shocked the nation last July, had to pay €160 for the privilege.

Eircom had previously insisted O'Connor would have to pay more than 180 times that price at €29,216 – a bill warranted by €22,000 of labour costs and more for materials.

But following a national publicity campaign, the high price of making a phone call was substantially reduced.

"It was installed yesterday [Tuesday]; it's a new kind of a system," declared a triumphant O'Connor from his crackling mobile phone.

"It's the same as a mobile system. It took a lot of convincing and a lot of thinking.

"We are very happy now and they installed one for the parents who are about 20 metres away from my house."

O'Connor and his family live in the Gap of Dunloe in rural Kerry and were left with no choice but to use mobile phones for communicating with the outside world, although this was not ideal given the poor local reception.

In order to connect him, Eircom had said it would have to install 43 timber poles to run the 2,400 metres of cable to his house.

While the telecom provider had pointed out in a letter that it was obliged to provide lines to customers, even at a loss to the company, it was only prepared to do it to a maximum cost of €7,000.

Following the negative publicity, Eircom examined alternative options for providing the service, as a result of which O'Connor finally got connected last week.