Chatty Dubliners top eircom phone survey

When it comes to having the gift of the gab Dubliners have come out top.

New figures reveal that residents in the capital are the chatterboxes of Ireland, talking for longer on the telephone than in any other county.

Eircom’s national phone survey found that Dubliners talk for an average 4 minutes 18 seconds per call.

The average length of a call is four minutes, up six seconds on last year.

Meath follows in second place, with Kildare and Wicklow taking third and fourth place consecutively.

Eircom users in Cork have become a little less chatty and moves out of this year’s top five, with their neighbours in Kerry taking their spot.

Donegal people continue to spend the least time on the phone, spending an average of 3 minutes and 42 seconds on each call.

Wexford has become a talkative county and this year moves out of the top five for shortest call length to be replaced by Tipperary, which spends an average of 3 minutes and 48 seconds on each phone call.

“What is very interesting to note from this year’s survey is that Irish people are spending more time talking on the phone than last year,” said Debbie Byrne, head of consumer marketing.

“To meet the needs of our customers’ demands we provide a range of telephone packages to suit everyone. Some of our customers do all their talking at weekends, others do it in the evening time and some customers just like a good old chat anytime during the day, whatever a customer’s preference is we have something to cater for them”.

The survey was based on calls made over 12 months up to May 2006 across all 26 counties.