Vodafone Ireland customers spent an average of €542 each on mobile calls and text messages last year, significantly more than subscribers at every Vodafone Group company outside of Japan.
Figures published yesterday by Vodafone show its 1.73 million Irish users spent on average €109 more than the firm's British subscribers and €230 more than German subscribers in 2002.
The strong average-revenue-per-user figures reported by Vodafone Ireland were a key factor that enabled the firm to report record pre-tax profits of €155 million in the 12-month period to March 2002.
The company's first financial return since it was demerged from Eircom, which has been seen by The Irish Times, also shows Vodafone Ireland made turnover of €782 million during this period.
The Consumers' Association of Ireland (CAI) last night accused Vodafone of using its Irish subscribers to subsidise its operations in other jurisdictions. CAI chief executive Mr Dermot Jewell said Vodafone should consider reducing costs, given that it made so much profit.
A Vodafone Ireland spokeswoman said last night the strong average-revenue performance was attributable to voice usage, which was more than 25 per cent greater than the group average.
She said text-messaging usage was also higher in the Republic and Vodafone Ireland was the first group company outside of Japan to achieve the target of generating one-fifth of revenues coming from data services.
Vodafone's performance figures show that in December more than 135 million text messages were sent by Irish customers. But the firm does not publish figures showing average minutes per user for all its subsidiary operations, making it impossible to compare Irish consumers' pattern of mobile use against consumers with other Vodafone Group companies.
Mr Ultan Ryan, an independent telecoms consultant, said it was probably true that Irish users talked more on their mobiles. But he said the firm should stop hiding behind these claims and produce detailed average-minutes-per-user figures for the Republic.
Vodafone Group's key performance figures show that only subscribers to Vodafone's Japanese subsidiary J-Phone spent more than Irish consumers when all group companies are compared.
J-Phone recorded an average-revenue-per-user figure of €685 in the 12 months to December 2002, a fall of €7 on the previous three months.
Analysts said this was because fewer active users signed up and diluted its revenue figures.
Vodafone Ireland's average-revenue-per-user figure increased by €10 over the same quarter, as the firm introduced new services such as multimedia messaging.
Vodafone signed up an extra 24,000 customers in the three months to December 31st, 2002, bringing the firm's total subscriber base to 1.73 million.
These new subscriber figures may push Vodafone's market share above 60 per cent for the first time since the third mobile operator, Meteor, entered the Irish market.
