2 billion texts sent in three months

A RECORD two billion text messages were sent by Irish mobile phone users in the final three months of last year.

Vodafone and O2, the country’s biggest mobile phone operators have a customer base of almost four million between them.

At the end of last year Vodafone had 2.23 million Irish customers while O2 had 1.72 million.

O2 added 82,000 new customers in 2008, which is up almost 5% compared with the previous year.

Its customers sent 699 million texts in the final quarter of 2008 — a 74% increase on the same period last year while Vodafone customers sent close to one billion messages, the highest ever number of texts sent in any quarter.

Meteor would not give specific figures on how many texts were sent last year but it said it has a customer base of 1.3 million and a 20% market share. It said 450 million texts were sent by its customers in December alone.

Despite the increase in messages sent revenues at O2 Ireland for last year were down 3.4% to e957 million.

Chief financial officer with O2 Ireland, Paul Whelan, said that on the back of a slowing economy, trading conditions in the last quarter of 2008 were very difficult for all businesses and the telecoms sector was no different.

“As the business environment continues to get tougher, we are focusing greater efforts on attracting and retaining customers in the year ahead,” he said.

Vodafone said its Irish customers exceeded the average European usage, with customers here using on average 253 voice minutes and sending 160 messages in the last three months of 2008, compared to a European average of 148 voice minutes and 77 messages.