New figures from mobile phone giant Vodafone show that Ireland's ARPU, or average revenue per user, continues to be amongst the group's highest - it stood at €553 compared with £292 sterling in Britain and €313 in Germany.
Vodafone said it increased the number of its Irish subscribers from 1.7 million to 1.74 million during the year, with customer numbers up by 11,000 in the last quarter.
The world's largest mobile phone group by revenue posted a forecast-beating 26% rise in annual core earnings in Chief Executive Christopher Gent's last hurrah.
After the writing-off of goodwill on acquisitions orchestrated by Gent in his six years at the top, the company made a full-year pre-tax loss of £6.2 billion sterling - although this was half the loss made last year.
The strong underlying performance was also helped in part by currency effects. Vodafone generates half its revenue in the euro zone, but reports its figures in pounds, and the euro has surged in value in recent months. On a country-by-country basis, Vodafone reported continued growth in average revenues in Britain, but a flattening in Germany and Italy.
Proportionate earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose to £12.679 billion. Vodafone increased its total dividend by 15% with a final dividend of 0.8983 pence per share. The total dividend for the year was 1.6929 pence.
CEO Gent reaffirmed Vodafone's commitment to US joint venture Verizon Wireless and also promised to progressively raise its dividend payout ratio in the coming years.
He also repeated a previous belief that there was no need to write off Vodafone's third generation wireless licences, despite a writedown by smaller British rival mmO2 last week.
Vodafone's data revenues, currently generated almost entirely by text messages, rose to 14.6% of its service revenue in the year to the end of March from 13.9% three months before.
Vodafone said it had 119.7 million subscribers at the end of March, compared with 112.5 million at the end of December. Organic customer growth was 11%.
