Mobile operator O2 earned an average of €556 from each of its one million-plus Irish customers last year, almost €200 more than the amounts handed over by its UK and German consumers.
O2 Ireland yesterday said overall average revenue per user (ARPU) for 2003 grew to €556 from €543. Its pre-paid customers spent an average of €355, compared with €337 in 2002. Post-paid, or bill-paying customers, spent €1,048, up more than €30 from €1,017.
Its parent, MMO2 published figures showing that the average Irish customer spends more cash than those in its other markets. In Germany, ARPU was €360, while in the UK it was €385.
The Republic consistently delivers the highest revenue per customer figures. O2 says this is because its Irish customers spend longer on their mobiles.
Three months ago, the company reported that its customers in the Republic spent an average of 192 minutes on mobile calls in the three months to the end of September. The equivalent figure in Britain was 114 minutes.
It did not release any details of the length of time its customers spent on their phones during the last quarter of 2003. However, it will release this data for the year to the end of next March when it publishes its financial results for the same period in three months time.
During the last quarter of 2003, 96,000 new customers signed up to O2 Ireland. Of these, 91,000 were pre-paid users, while the remainder were bill-paying clients. Its customer base reached 1.37 million by the end of December, a 10 per cent increase on the beginning of the year.
Irish customers are also spending more than average on media messaging, internet and other data services. This element accounted for 21.1 per cent of Irish revenues, compared with a group average 19.8 per cent.
Text messages continued to grow in popularity, with O2 Ireland customers sending 301 million texts during the last three months of 2003. At 7.5 cent per message, this generated a revenue of €22.6 million.
The group as a whole signed up 855,000 new customers, taking its total number to 20.1 million. The UK was its biggest market, with 13 million subscribers, while Germany had 5.6 million. In all three markets, O2 users sent 2.9 billion text messages.
Ms Danuta Gray, chief executive, O2 Ireland, said yesterday that the last quarter of 2003 proved to be "an exceptionally strong one". She pointed out that it continued to draw new customers in a mature market.
O2 Ireland was formerly the mobile arm of Esat Telecom, which British Telecom (BT) took over in 2000. BT then demerged its mobile business, which became MMO2. The company employs 1,400 people in the Republic.
