Mobile Phone Reviews
 
 
Britons Cutting Back On Text Messaging Spend

Wed, 13 May 2009

Mobile phone operator O2 has revealed that Britain’s mobile users are cutting back on text messaging, despite the low costs of the service, according to a report by The Times.

The reduction in texting, revealed in the first quarter results of O2’s parent company Telefonica, contributed to a near 4 per cent drop in the group’s key 'average revenue per user' (ARPU) figure during the three-month period.

A spokesman for the company said that overall text usage had not dropped, but explained that consumers are becoming more aware of how they use their mobile phones .

Text messaging generates the second biggest revenue for the phone companies, behind voice calls . The popularity of the service is highlighted by figures for 2008 which show that a staggering 78.9 billion text messages were sent in the UK alone.

The Times reports that for three years after the launch of the service in 1995, texts could only be sent between users of the same network. However, in 1998 the market was opened up so texts could be sent across different mobile networks .

The newspaper revealed that despite the recession, O2 increased its customer base by 141,753 in the first quarter of 2009, taking its total number of mobile customers to 20.4 million, excluding Tesco Mobile .

Matthew Key, chairman and chief executive of Telefonica Europe, said: "In spite of a tough economic environment, we delivered a strong set of results in increasingly competitive markets."
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