O2 gains pace on market leaders

O2 IRELAND continues to gain pace on rivals Vodafone and increased its customer base to more than 1.6 million and revenue by 4.5% to €237m in the three months to the end of June, compared to the same quarter last year.

O2, which is now owned by Telefónica, said the average customer bill for the period was €46.70, up 5.6% from €44.20 in the first three months of this year.

Customer numbers at O2 are up 2% compared with the same period last year to 1.631 million and 13,800 new post-pay customers were added in the quarter.

Customers used on average 249 minutes during the quarter, up from 237 in the same period last year.

This compares with 234 voice minutes used by Vodafone customers in the same period. Recently, Vodafone Ireland said its customer base stands at 2.2 million.

O2 Ireland also said 404 million text messages were sent during the three-month period, showing a 3% increase in text usage on the same period last year, up from 392 million.

Chief financial officer of O2 Ireland, Paul Whelan, said: “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.

“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 among consumers. Early indications are that sales of O2 Broadband are exceeding expectations.

“In April 2007, O2 introduced a major new pricing initiative for our pre-pay customers, O2 Friends, which entitles all Speakeasy customers to make 1 cent calls at off-peak hours and at weekends to three friends of their choice on the O2 network until 2009.

“Our research has shown that 80% of Speakeasy customers call the same three numbers on weekends and at off-peak hours,” she said.

O2 Ireland said they will introduce new roaming rates for all its customers on August 30.

Customers will be able to make calls anywhere within the EU for 49c per minute and receive calls for 24c per minute. Pre-pay customers will automatically be switched to the new rates, as will post-pay customers who do not already avail of O2’s My Europe roaming tariff.