Mobile user numbers soaring

By RICHARD BRADDELL

Telecom's mobile subscriber base reached 980,000 at the end of June, up 59,000 on three months earlier and up from 677,000 a year earlier.

Two weeks ago, rival Vodafone said its customer base had reached 562,000 at the end of June, up 89,000 from 473,000 at the end of March.

Telecom's general manager of mobility, Mohan Jesudason, said its figures excluded prepaid phones that had been disconnected through not being recharged in the past six months.

He also said that Telecom's text messaging service was resulting in 167,000 messages on a typical day with an average 13 messages a day for each digital customer. Digital customers now account for 240,759 subscribers.

Trials of Telecom's new $200 million CDMA-based digital network have begun in Wellington. It will be complemented with WAP technology capable of delivering trimmed-down internet when it is commercially launched next year.

Telecom also announced that Xtra, New Zealand's largest internet service provider, expected to top 300,000 customers in August after increasing its dial-up customer base to 287,000 after adding 9000 customers last month.

Xtra's general manager, Graham Mitchell, said customer sessions averaged 480,000 a day, up from 283,000 a year ago.

He said Xtra connected 49 per cent of residential consumers to the internet and 47.5 per cent of the business market.