Talk is not cheap as mobile bill hits €4bn

MOBILE mania is continuing to take an even tighter hold on the country as latest figures show we are talking ourselves into a €4 billion annual phone bill.

The chief culprit is the mobile phone, which has a grip on 94% of the population or 3.78 million subscribers a 6% increase on the middle of last year and more than double the number who had mobiles at the start of 2000.

Texting has also taken off at an unprecedented rate with one billion text messages sent in the last three months of last year.