O2 customer base falls as revenue dips to €196m

O2 saw its Irish customer base fall slightly in the year to the end of March as service revenue dropped 6% to €196 million.

Text messaging is continuing to prove increasingly popular, with 833 million texts sent in the first three months of the year, an increase of 11% on last year.

O2’s total customer base at the end of March was 1.706m, down from 1.710m in the same period last year.

The average revenue per user for the quarter was €37.37, down from €39.34 for the same period last year.

Telefonica O2 said it is continuing to invest in its network infrastructure in Ireland and, as a result of the upgrade of its mobile broadband service, it will be offering higher speed internet access this summer in city locations. O2 currently has over 142,000 mobile broadband customers on its network.

The company said the increasing popularity of smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone has seen a threefold uplift in data usage levels in the last two years amongst consumer customers alone.

O2 increased its postpay customer base, adding over 10,000 new customers to 701,833, its highest ever level. The prepay base declined by 18,730, however, in the same quarter.

Chief financial officer with O2 Ireland, Paul Whelan, said: “As a result of the extremely tough trading conditions, but also the better value for money products we are offering our customers, we continued to see downward pressures on revenues in the first quarter of this year.”

The mobile operator said that over 140,000 people have signed up for Priority Ticketing, which offers customers the first chance at getting tickets for the O2 arena in Dublin.

Meanwhile, challenging market conditions saw revenues at BT Ireland fall by 3% in its full financial year 2009/10 to €801m.