Mobile firms post healthy customer gains

Three of the UK's national mobile phone operators - Cellnet, One2One and Orange - have posted healthy customer gains for the second quarter of this year.

BTCellnet retains the second largest customer base, rising to 5.02 million. It also added over 91,000 new customers to its Business First programme, bringing the total up to over 200,000.

Orange widened the gap between itself and One2One with an additional 430,000 net customers compared with 401,000 for the smallest mobile operator - although the rate at which this gap is widening is slowing down. However, the minnow is almost at level pegging with BTCellnet when it comes to pre-pay customers - it now has 1,230,000, accounting for 46 per cent of its total customer base.

Vodafone has delayed posting its results for the UK until next Tuesday, when it will post International results. But, it's expected to post even higher subscription gains, a large number of which are likely to be pre-pay.