Meteor's owner reports healthy results

The State's third mobile phone firm Meteor has said it has added 24,600 new customers in the last quarter, most of them prepaid, and bringing the total of Irish customers to 180,600.

Its US owner, Western Wireless, reporting full year financial results last night, said that sales amounted to €413.6m in the last three months of 2003, up 36% on the same period a year earlier.

Net profit for the group was $2m (€1.5m) against a loss of $23m (€17.9m) for the previous year's quarter.

Meteor was launched in Ireland in February 2001.