Irish people's love of talk is music to the ears of mobile phone company O2 which said today phone users here spend an average of three hours a month on their beloved mobiles and sent 992 million text messages last year.
Irish customers spend an average of 188 minutes per month on the company's network. For an O2 UK customer it was 107 minutes per month and for an O2 Germany customer it was 109 minutes per month.
The company formerly known as Esat Digifone, released usage statistics on its O2 Ireland network with its financial results which show turnover for the full year was €686 million.
O2's Customer base grew by 6.4 per cent during the year to 1.255 million. Mobile data grew to 15.3 per cent of service revenues for the year, from 9.7 per cent in the previous year. The number of SMS text mesages sent during 2003 increased to 992 million from 666 million in the previous year.