MOBILE phone group Orange boosted revenues by nine per cent last year as 11 per cent more customers signed up for its services, parent company France Telecom said.

Total revenues rose to £12.25bn, while customer numbers increased to 49.1 million from 44.4 million the year before.

In the UK, revenues rose by 7.4 per cent to £4bn on a 2.5 per cent rise in customers to 13.65 million.

The group kept its leadership of the market in France, boosting comparable revenues there by 4.3 per cent to £5.5bn.

Orange said it had a particularly good fourth quarter, with 2.2 million customers joining.

The company operates in 18 countries, with its two main markets in France and the UK.

In the UK, Orange saw the key industry measure of average revenue per user (ARPU) rise by 4.6 per cent to £271, while it increased by 0.5 per cent to £260 in France.

Since new chief executive Sol Trujillo took up his post last March, the company has undergone changes designed to remove non-active, "dormant" customers from its books.

* mm02 said it had achieved more than 20 million customers for the first time, as revenues grew in its UK, Irish and German businesses.