Business Opinion: It is amazing really. Only now, after pretty much every man woman and child in the State has been sold a mobile phone - some of them two - does competition break out.

The latest data from Vodafone and O2 shows that average revenue per user is finally starting to fall after years of spectacular growth that have given us the biggest mobile phone bills in Europe, if not the world.

Vodafone's monthly average revenue per user fell to €46.9 in the last quarter from €53.4 a year ago. The decline in O2's was from €47 to €45.

The explanation, according to the mobile phone companies, is more competition. To quote Gerry Fahey, the strategy director at Vodafone Ireland: "There is definitely more competition in the market and more people fighting for the same customers."

This, of course, is just another way of saying what we have suspected for a long time - that there was no real competition in the Irish mobile market for years while the only two players - Vodafone and O2 - tacitly colluded to keep prices high as they carved up the market between them.

The result was huge profits for the two mobile companies that were the envy of the mobile world. In what just be one of the most patronising bits of spinning ever perpetrated in Ireland, the average revenues per user were explained away blithely as the natural consequence of Irish people's love of the sound of their own voices.

The inconvenient facts, such as the existence of lower revenues in markets with a similar demographic, were swept aside by this nonsense.

And if you still have doubts as to whether is was nonsense, ask yourself this simple question. Is the reason that the average revenues per user are now falling because we are talking less?

Have we suddenly run out of things to say?

The answer, of course, is no. The reasons average revenues are falling is because there is now some competition and the big players are having to do something they never had to do before: cut prices and manage their yields in order to win customers.

It is simply not a coincidence that in the same week that Vodafone and O2 reveal their falling revenues, Meteor, the third player in the market revealed that it had increased its subscribers by 50 per cent (from 500,000 to 750,000) on the back of a marketing strategy based around being the cheapest player in the market.

Add to that entry of 3, and is pretty clear that Vodafone and O2 have realised the jig is up.

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A similar exercise in hoodwinking also appears to be getting under way over at Irish Insurance Federation.

These are the people whose trenchant opposition to the work of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board held up its works and delayed the action plan which ushered in lower motor insurance, the same people who produced all sorts of baffling statistics to support the view that high motor premiums here were about anything but profit making by insurance company.

In a similarly public-spirited fashion, the federation last week waded into the debate on mandatory pensions. It called for the introduction of a scheme similar to the one in New Zealand, where workers are automatically enrolled in pensions schemes but have the right to opt out.

A radical reform of this nature is needed to bridge the pensions gap - the shortfall in annual savings against the amount needed to provide a reasonable retirement income - which has now reached €7 billion a year, according to the federation. This equates to €3,700 annually for every person in the workforce, it says.

Michael Kemp, the head of the federation, says: "Clearly, it is becoming ever more vital for reforms to help workers and employers bridge the gap before demographic changes make decent pensions unaffordable and our current structure unsustainable."

The federation's proposals would both cut the cost to the State of providing pensions "while delivering better pensions benefits to workers, near-universal coverage and long-term savings to the State".

Better yet, they "will ensure that all workers can look forward to a financially secure retirement".

Bless the federation and Mr Kemp for their concern about all the poor pensioners to be, but perhaps he should also have pointed out that a soft mandatory scheme along the lines of New Zealand's Kiwisaver would also make everybody in the workforce a customer of the members of the Irish Insurance Federation, unless they chose to opt out.

While the New Zealand government may administer the scheme, the money compulsorily deducted from workers' pay cheques will find its way into pension products offered by private insurance companies.

Nice work if you can get it . . . as they say.