Pre-paid mobiles hit Christmas peak

The UK's mobile phone network operators have reported bumper sales for the final quarter of 1998, with growth fuelled by pre-paid packages - many intended as Christmas presents.

Vodafone, the largest of the four national operators, reported the biggest gains. It clocked up 933,000 new customers, 755,000 of which opted for the heavily advertised pre-paid 'Pay as You Talk' service. The company - rumoured to be considering a late bid for US mobile giant AirTouch, which is currently in talks with Bell Atlantic - now has 4,874,000 UK customers, and 4,259,000 in other world markets.

In second place, Cellnet registered 658,000 new users, taking it past the landmark of 4 million UK customers, while Orange and One2One - the UK's youngest operators running exclusively digital networks - notched up 512,000 and 439,000 customers respectively.

Pre-paid services accounted for almost 80 per cent of new customers on all networks apart from Orange - where the proportion was only 64 per cent.

Peter Richardson, senior analyst and program manager European Telecommunications Group, Dataquest, said: "The latest figures really reflect Christmas purchases. The ratio of subscribers to pre-paid customers [who do not sign a contract or receive bills] shifted markedly in the fourth quarter, and even though Orange signed up fewer pre-paid, the figure is still up significantly on the previous quarter."

In spite of number portability coming into effect - making it easier for users to change networks - Dataquest's Richardson said the rate at which customers join and leave operators wouldn't increase dramatically.

In related news, America Online has also released impressive figures for the month immediately before Christmas. The world's largest online service said its members spent approximately $1.2bn on e-shopping between 26 November and 27 December 1998.