Vodafone Irish users pay more than those elsewhere

Vodafone's Irish customers are paying more for their mobile phone services than consumers in the multinational's other markets, the latest figures show.

Performance indicators released by Vodafone yesterday showed that on average, its Irish customers paid €48.80 a month between the end of March and the end of June.

This was the highest amount paid a month by customers in the 16 countries in which Vodafone does business.

Contract customers, those who receive monthly bills, paid €102.80, while pre-paid users, who top up their mobile phone credits as they go along, paid €29.30.

In the UK, Vodafone customers paid an average of €34.72, with contract customers paying bills of €66.21 and pre-paid forking out just €13, less than half what their Irish counterparts pay.

In Germany, Vodafone customers paid an average of €22.10 a-month. Contract customers paid €38.40 while pre-paid were charged €7.60.

The Netherlands, where customers paid average monthly bills of €35.70 during the period, was the next most expensive Vodafone country. That was followed by Spain, where monthly payments averaged €35.30.

Vodafone and other players in the mobile market have consistently maintained that Irish people pay more for their services because they use their phones more than customers in other countries.

The figures released yesterday show that during the three-month period from the end of March to the end of June, Irish people spent an average of 660 minutes making and receiving calls on their mobile phones. This was ahead of the UK at 445 minutes and Germany at 258 minutes.

Similar statistics for Australia show that Vodafone customers in that country spent an average of 640 minutes on their phones over the same period.

As well as making the same use of their phones, the breakdown between contract and pre-paid customers is almost exactly the same as in the Republic. Pre-paid customers account for 73.9 per cent of Vodafone's business in Australia and 73.6 per cent in the Republic.

But Australians paid an average of just €29.50 a-month for their services. Contract customers paid monthly bills of €55.33, a little over half the €102.80 paid by their Irish counterparts.

Vodafone had 3.14 million customers in Australia at the end of June, which was 37,000 fewer than three months earlier.

During the same period, the company recruited an extra 15,000 subscribers in the Republic to leave it with a total of 2.09 million customers.

Vodafone is the biggest player in the Irish market with an approximate 50 per cent share, but does not have the same dominance in Australia.

The company said yesterday that Irish customers' bills fell by 5 per cent on the same period last year, when the figure was €51.40.

However, their average monthly payment increased slightly on the quarter ended March 31st, when it was €48.60. This pattern was repeated across all the company's markets.