Virgin Mobile adds lots of new subscribers

Still, Branson lost out on the round-the-world ballooning record, so it's been a mixed month...

Virgin Mobile's customer base grew 10 per cent over the past quarter. The group, which announced in May that it had moved into profit, added 171,367 new customers in the second quarter of 2002, 19.2 per cent more than the same quarter the previous year. The new subscribers bring Virgin Mobile's customer base up to 1.78 million - the lowest number of any of the UK's operators. In June Virgin also announced a new joint venture in America with US mobile operator Sprint, but today it announced that its joint venture with SingTel in Singapore will end.