Increased competition has taken its toll on Vodafone Ireland with the company confirming it is to lay off 100 people as average revenues per user continue to drop.
Despite adding 59,000 new customers in the three months to December 31st to bring its customer base to 2,178,000, the average revenue per user (ARPU) fell from €46.90 at the end of September to €45.60 at the end of December.
ARPU has now fallen by more than 9 per cent since December 2005 when it stood at €50.20.
Despite the decline, ARPU in Ireland remains the highest in Vodafone's main European markets. Vodafone Ireland strategy director Gerry Fahy said the higher ARPU reflected usage levels well above
the Vodafone European average. "Vodafone Ireland customers consumed on average 233 voice minutes and sent 119 text messages each month in this quarter compared to a Vodafone European average of 140 minutes and 59 text messages per month," he said.
He said the voluntary redundancies would be across all sections of the organisation.
Vodafone and O2 have been under increased competitive pressures with the arrival of new entrants such as Meteor and, more recently, 3 Ireland. Meteor, long regarded as the also-ran of the industry here, said in November that it now had 750,000 customers, a rise of 250,000 in just a year, which gave it a market share of 16 per cent.
Overall, Vodafone's mobile revenue increased by 6.1 per cent worldwide as its number of customers passed 200 million. However European revenue increased by just 0.9 per cent due largely to competitive pressures. This was off-set by revenue growth of 14.4 per cent in its other regions.
