5 years ago... Mobile firms post healthy customer gains

01.07.99: 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. 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.

01.07.04: In the ensuing five years since this story was written there have been a great many changes - not least of all to the names of the operators.

For BTCellnet, read O2 - a name change which preceded a change of ownership. For One2One, read T-Mobile - the result of the company changing hands.

The operators have also massively increased their subscriber bases, despite factoring in a change in counting practices.

The most recent figures from Ofcom show the total user numbers as:
Orange - 13.37 million customers
O2 - 12.62 million
T-Mobile - 12.38 million
Vodafone - 12.3 million

But now on the scene these four companies are also competing with Virgin Mobile which boasts more than five million customers and is the fastest growing operator in the UK. Also newcomer 3 has burst onto the market with the first consumer 3G offerings.