O2 Ireland was originally created as Esat Digifone in 1997, as part of Esat Telecom, been the second company to be awarded a GSM licence; currently the company is the second largest mobile phone operator in Ireland with approxiamately 40% share or 1.27 million customers, see communications in Ireland. In 2000 BT took over Esat Telecom and later demerged the mobile unit from the fixed line system which is now called Esat BT.