Mobile phone company O2 said today its customer numbers in Ireland for the three months to the end of June were flat compared with the previous quarter at 1.53 million but that revenues were up nearly 15 per cent on the same quarter last year.
The average revenue per user was €571, a rise of 2.7 per cent on the same period last year.
This compared with €356 in O2's German operations and £271 sterling (€392) in Britain, where ARPU dropped due to price cuts imposed by the regulator. Revenues in Ireland were up nearly 15 per cent on the same quarter last year.
Across the group O2 saidit had netted 646,000 new subscribers in its first quarter.
O2, Europe's sixth-largest mobile phone company with 24.6 million customers, said 232,000 new subscribers had signed up in Britain - substantially more than forecasts and soundly beating smaller rival Virgin Mobile - and 412,000 in Germany.
The costs of winning new customers, in terms of promotions and marketing, regulatory price cuts in its key markets of Britain and Germany and rising competition all left their mark, although German service revenue grew by a hefty 24 per cent.
UK service revenues grew by 3 per cent, in line with the company's mid single-digit full-year target. Stripping out the impact of regulatory price cuts, the company said growth was 10 per cent higher.
Nevertheless, O2 dashed some market hopes that it might raise UK full-year forecasts, which some analysts have called conservative, saying only it was "increasingly confident" of hitting all growth and margin targets.
"We've got a lot more confidence, having got three months under our belt, that it looks very doable," chief executive Peter Erskine told a conference call. "We'll do what we should do at the half year stage."
O2's shares opened unchanged at 136-1/2 pence in a flat broader European telecoms market, but edged 0.37 per cent higher in early trade. ARPU SLIPS Customer revenues, or 12-month ARPU, slipped, as expected.