Mobile phone company Orange has announced record-breaking sales figures indicating it may have overtaken BT Cellnet as Britain's second largest operator.
The company, which France Telecom is expected to float in March, kicked off the industry's fourth-quarter sales reports by announcing 1.56 million net new customers in the UK and 1.73 million in France.
The figures mean Orange doubled its customer base in the UK last year to 9.83 million, a number that is likely to put it ahead of Cellnet barring a surprisingly strong performance from the British Telecom subsidiary. Cellnet had 8.74 million customers at the end of the third quarter, and would have to have doubled its recent sales rates in the run-up to Christmas to stay ahead of Orange.
Orange said its UK sales beat its previous best of 1.41 million in the fourth quarter of 1999. Around 90% of the new customers bought pay-as-you-go phones, taking its pre-pay users to 6.76 million. Contract customers rose 111,000 to 3.08 million.
In France, it took a record 50% share of market growth, taking its customer base to 14.3 million. France Telecom injected its mobile operations into Orange after buying the company from Vodafone last year.
