The chief executive of mobile phone company Meteor has hit out at what he termed the 'rip off Ireland' created by Ireland's two other mobile phone companies: Digifone and Vodafone.
Chief executive David Sims said he was delighted with Meteor's first year of operations, and said the company now had 113,000 active customers. He said the last three months of the year had been particularly strong, with Meteor signing up 45,000 new customers, 23.6% of all mobile phones sold in the period.
Meteor customers are still overwhelming taking the prepay option, with only 3.5% signed up to contracts.
Over 60% of Meteor customers are under 25 years old, with 54% based in Dublin.
Sims said although student customers may spend less, they were heavy users of high margin data services. He said Meteor makes 30% of revenues from data services like text messaging, compared with figures of 12-13% he quoted for Vodafone and Digifone.
He said Meteor should start to make a profit in mid 2003, earlier than its previous target of 2004.
He said the confusion created by the rebranding of Eircell to Vodafone, and Digifone to MMO2, gave Meteor an opportunity to win new customers.
He also said full number portability, allowing customer to take their 087 or 086 prefix if they move to Meteor, should be brought in as soon as possible.
