Mobile phone company O2 Ireland says its total customer numbers fell in the first quarter of this year, mainly due to a drop in pre-paid subscribers.
The company, owned by Spain's Telefónica, said it added just over 10,000 new contract customers in the three months, bringing the total to a record 701,800. But pre-paid customer numbers fell 18,700. This brought its total customer base to just over 1.7 million.
Service revenue fell to €196m from €210m a year earlier, with revenue from data making up a bigger proportion of this, due to the increase in the use of smartphones. The average monthly amount paid by each customers (average revenue per user) fell to €37.37, from €39.34 a year earlier.
O2 Ireland said it has upgraded its mobile broadband service to give higher download speeds of up to 21Mbps. The new speeds will be available to customers from later this summer.
Chief financial officer Paul Whelan said tough trading conditions and price reductions had continued to put pressure on its revenues.
Meanwhile, Telefónica reported a 2% gain in first quarter net profit, as well as a slide in operating profit, and maintained its targets for this year.
The company said net earnings came to €1.66 billion while operating profit before depreciation fell 4% to just over €5 billion.
