THE NUMBER OF Eircom broadband customers fell in the year to end of June but at a slower pace than in the previous year.

The company now has 451,000 retail broadband customers, a one per cent decrease on its customer base since 30 June 2012. This compares to a five per cent fall reported in last year’s results.

In its full year results this morning, the company has reported revenue of €1.4 billion, down 8 per cent on the previous year, while earnings (before interest, taxes and depreciation) were down 12 per cent to €487 million.

Eircom reduced its operating costs to €612 million for the year – a 6 per cent improvement.

In the mobile market, Eircoms says that customer numbers fell by two per cent in the quarter to 1,059,000 through to the end of June this year.

However, there were 83,000 net additions in the post-pay segment during the year to the end of June 2013, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 67,000 post-pay customers.

Mobile revenues continued to decline by 5 per cent for the year but mobile earnings (before interest, taxes and depreciation) grew to €17 million, almost double the previous year.

Speaking about today’s results Eircom group’s chief executive, Herb Hribar, said that “significant challenges” remain for the company.

But he pledged that the number of homes and businesses with fibre-powered broadband would pass 600,000 by the end of the year.

“Early next year customers will be able to access speeds of up to 100Mb per second,” he said.

“Following the launch of our 4G service this week, almost 30% of the population already has access to superfast mobile data speeds which we believe will peak between 20-25Mb per second.”

Watch: Meteor to roll out its 4G service today, but just how fast is it?

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