Mobile market soars 18 per cent pre-millennium

The UK mobile market grew by 18 per cent in the last quarter of 1999, with Orange taking the lion's share of new subscribers.

For the period October to December 1999, Orange signed up 1.41 million net new customers, bringing its total customer base to 4.9 million, and more than 50 per cent of these customers joined on a subscription tariff.

By comparison, the market leader in the UK, Vodafone Airtouch took on a further 1.075 million customers for the same period - over one million of which were pre-paid. Its UK total now stands at 7.94 million but it has a worldwide customer base of 35.5 million.

BT Cellnet grew by 1.001 million net customers to 6.95 million, and the gap has increased on the minnow of the mobile phone market, One2One, as it signs up 903,000 customers. Finally, Virgin Mobile, which launched in November this year and runs on One2One's network has a total customer base of 100,000.