THE future is continuing to look bright for mobile phone Orange after the company announced a doubling of its UK customers in the past year.

Orange said its customer base had jumped 68 per cent to 30.5 million in announcing its latest group results and revealed it had also moved into making an operating profit.

But it dampened hopes that it may expand its call centre operation despite the boom in mobile phone users.

Orange, which was floated off by parent France Telecom earlier this year, employs about 5,000 staff in North-East call centres at Darlington, North Tyneside and Peterlee.

Media relations executive Sarah Taylor told The Northern Echo that although the company was continuing to expand, no announcement was imminent on new jobs.

The group results for the year ending December 31, 2000, showed that customer numbers doubled to nearly ten million, while the group increased its market share against the other mobile phone operators from 20 to 25 per cent.

Orange said it had also seen "explosive growth" in text messaging, with messaging traffic accounting for seven per cent of UK network revenues in the second half of last year.

It had almost 700,000 WAP users at the end of December, in France and the UK.

The boost in numbers helped the group report an operating profit of £240m, against a loss of £69.8m in 1999.

Orange added it had posted a "record performance" with rapidly growing profitability.

Chief executive Jean-Francois Pontal said this year the group would be concentrating on building upon its momentum, rolling out the Orange brand and third generation phone services.

The results made clear the balance sheet strength of Orange, said to be adding about half-a-million new mobile phone customers each month.

Last year, the group was hit by technical difficulties in the UK which affected its customer service network and meant that some new users were unable to register their phones.

It has since had an on-going programme to develop its network, ready for additional new capacity.