Mobile phone companies make me laugh. The four UK companies have spent the past fortnight fighting for column inches.
Their constant clamouring for media attention makes me think of spin master Alastair Campbell.
The news was two of them had rebranded and the industry wasn't doing too bad, thank you very much.
T-Mobile UK, which was called One2One before Deutsche Telekom united its worldwide mobile operations under one brand name, added 330,000 subscribers to increase its customer base to 10.8 million, a year-on-year increase of about 20 per cent. The company doubled its earnings in the UK and worldwide. Chief executive Kai-Uwe Ricke said: "T-Mobile remains the fastest-growing international mobile telephony provider by far."
MM02 announced the launch of O2, the brand to unify its five European network operators, which include Cellnet in the UK. Chief executive Peter Erskine said: "This is much more than a re-branding exercise. It represents the coming together of five powerful businesses and is the external manifestation of the do-it-once culture which runs through our entire operation."
Nothing like blowing your own trumpet.
Orange didn't rebrand, which is no bad thing when you consider some of the options - lemon, gooseberry and rhubarb - but it did report a 16 per cent rise in worldwide turnover for the quarter. The company increased its customer base by 1.27 million to 40.5 million, a 22 per cent increase over the past year. Orange's deputy chief executive Graham Howe said the company was "helping drive the pace".
Vodaphone also managed a 22 per cent customer growth in the year to March 31, bringing its worldwide base to 101.1 million customers. Germany and the UK were the strongest performers, with the percentage of contract customers rising from 40 per cent to 43 per cent, and from 35 per cent to 38 per cent, respectively.
Chief executive Sir Christopher Gent said: "This year has seen average revenue per user stabilise in our major markets, ahead of our previous expectations, even though customer growth has been better than anticipated."
Which sounds like something Gordon Brown might say.
He wouldn't have Alastair Campbell helping him, would he?
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