O2 Ireland this morning revealed that it is bucking an international trend of falling average revenues per user (ARPU), reporting that ARPU in the second quarter increased 5.6pc to €46.70, compared with €44.20 in the previous quarter.
Quarterly customer growth appears static at 1.63 million customers, but this is up 2pc compared with last year’s quarter.
The company said monthly average ARPU for prepay customers was €30, up 7pc from €28 in the last quarter.
ARPU for postpay customers was €83.80, up 2.2pc from €82 in the previous quarter.
Average monthly minutes increased 5pc to 249 minutes and more than 404 million text messages were sent over the O2 network in the three months from April to June, up 3pc on last year.
Data revenue as a percentage of overall service revenue was 25.09pc, up from 20.54pc last year.
“In what is a very challenging market environment O2 Ireland displayed a solid performance in the second quarter, with customers making more use of our range of services,” explained O2 Ireland’s chief financial officer, Paul Whelan.
“In particular we are seeing SME and corporate customers increasing their use of data products and services such as GPRS and BlackBerry, while O2 Active is proving popular amongst consumers. Early indications are that sales of O2 Broadband are exceeding expectations.
“Service revenue grew to €237m, up 6pc on the last quarter and up 4.5pc on the same period last year,” Whelan continued. “The average monthly minutes of use also grew, which was reflected in growth in ARPU levels right across the customer base.
“However, ARPU growth was particularly driven by the increase in our postpay customer base, which grew by 13.5pc when compared to the same period last year,” Whelan added.
The company said it will introduce new roaming rates in August in line with the new European regulations. O2 customers will be able to make calls anywhere in the EU for 49 cent (excluding Vat) and receive calls for 24 cent per minute.
The company said prepay customer will be automatically switched to the new rates, while postpay customers on the My Europe tariff can choose to opt in to the new EU rates by texting ‘EU’ to 50202.
By John Kennedy
