O2 UK gains 286,267 contract subscribers, total base reaches 20.41Mn

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2 UK ended Q1’09 with revenues down by 11% from £1.58 billion in 2008 to £1.41 billion in 2009, driven by depreciation of Pound. The operator added 141,753 net mobile subscribers in Q1, taking the total subscriber base to 20.41 million (excluding Tesco Mobile), showing a growth of 7%. The growth was attributed to its Simplicity SIM-only tariffs, new business tariffs, broadband promotions as well as new contract and prepay mobile broadband tariffs.
O2 added 286,267 contract subscribers, a hike of 18.4%. The contract subscribers accounted for 42.6% of the total subscriber base at March’09 end.
The operator posted total ARPU of £21.71, down by 3.6%.  The operator claimed the lowest churn recorded in the industry, with a year-on-year reduction of 0.2 percentage points in the quarter to reach 1.2%.
Chairman and chief executive of Telef³nica Europe Matthew Key said: In the first quarter of 2009 Telef³nica O2 UK continued to outperform in a slower market, achieving record levels of contract churn and obtaining market leading customer satisfaction indicators across all segments while delivering on ongoing efficiency programmes.
During the quarter, we also announced a milestone pan-European network infrastructure sharing collaboration with Vodafone which will deliver cost efficiencies amounting to hundreds of millions of euros. We have now moved into the implementation phase of this wide-ranging programme.”