Talk-happy Irish push up O2 profits
O2 Ireland, the Irish division of UK mobile giant mm02, now has 1,391,000 customers in Ireland. Numbers increased 11% in the year to the end of March.
Cutomers are also spending more time on their phones and send more text messages.
All of these factors were the driving forces behind the company's €206m (£140m) profits to the end of March, up from (€129m) £88m in the same period a year earlier.
The number of SMS messages sent by O2 customers jumped past the 1bn mark to 1.194bn, an increase of an impressive 20pc.
Meanwhile, minutes of usage per person on the O2 Ireland network increased by 11 minutes to 197 minutes per month from 188 minutes per month to end March 2003.
That was far ahead of other phone users - an O2 UK customer spent 123 minutes per month on the phone while for an O2 Germany customer, it was 118 minutes per month.
The average revenue per user (ARPU) was also up, now at €559 compared to €556 in the previous quarter. Pre-pay ARPU grew to €357 and post-pay ARPU grew to €1,061.
