O2’s Irish revenues up 7pc in Q3


12 Nov 2007

Service revenues at O2 Ireland for the third quarter reached €243m, up 6.8pc on last year. Data as a percentage of revenue grew to 26.4pc during the quarter.

The company, which is owned by Telefonica, appeared to have bucked the general trend of falling ARPU (average revenue per user) in the mobile sector, with ARPU growing 1.7pc year-on-year to €84.90 per month for postpay customers.

However, prepay ARPU was €29.20 down from €30 in the last quarter and from €29.80 exactly a year ago.

During the three months, some 393 million text messages were sent, down 1pc on last year’s 397 million.

The total customer base for O2 Ireland at the end of September stood at 1.632 million, up 1.8pc, with 20,900 new postpay customers added in the quarter.

Describing the third quarter as one of the most competitive quarters to date for the company, O2 Ireland’s chief financial officer Paul Whelan said: “Data revenue continues to show strong growth, which is reflective of the uptake of data services by our customers, including O2 Broadband which we launched in July.

“Uptake of our broadband product to date has been robust, exceeding our expectations.

“However, there is no question but that the Irish mobile market is now highly competitive. The recent launch of Tesco Mobile has brought the number of Ireland’s mobile providers to five. Obviously this is good news for Irish consumers,” Whelan said.

By John Kennedy