The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

 has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from https://electricnews.net/news.html?code=8636523

O2 says it will meet half-year goals
Tuesday, October 01 2002
by Ciaran Buckley


O2 claimed on Tuesday that it is on-target to achieve its projected revenue and
cost goals, as the firm readies its soon-to-launch MMS service. 









MmO2 announced the news in its pre-close update statement, prior to entering the
close period for its results to 30 September 2002, which are scheduled to be
announced on 19 November 2002.  "We're reaching our targets in terms of
service revenues and EBIDTA," said O2 spokesperson Simon Gordon to
ElectricNews.Net. "We're also beginning to see the benefits of the cost-cutting
program kicking in."



The company said that it expects O2 UK's service revenues to continue to grow at
10 percent and that its EBIDTA margin would benefit from the impact of a
restructuring, which was completed in August. That restructuring, announced in
February, saw the firm trim 1,900 jobs or 12.5 percent of its workforce, mostly
in the UK and Germany.



On Tuesday the company also predicted that it would experience lower marketing
costs, now that the re-branding process, which began in May has been completed. 



O2's German operation expects to achieve EBIDTA break-even during the course of
the current year, but the Dutch subsidiary's EBIDTA is expected to reflect the
company's recent customer acquisition drive in that market, the mobile operator
said. 



The firm offered little comment on its Irish subsidiary, simply saying that it
expects is business in the Republic to report first half-year performance in line
with expectations; an O2 Ireland spokesperson declined to elaborate on the
expected performance in the Republic. 





The company also announced that it is to launch its MMS offerings for Ireland,
the UK, Netherlands and Germany during October. MMS is a kind of advanced SMS
service that will allow users to send multimedia messages over a mobile phone --
including pictures taken with newly launched mobile phone cameras. 



The service is to be available to both pre- and post-pay customers and will
include Web-based applications, which will enable customers to store and
manipulate photos. Customers will also be able to upload images to a personal
"photo album" well as download images from O2's multi-media library. 



No specific pricing was provided for Ireland, but an O2 spokesperson told
ElectricNews.Net that the timing of the launch and pricing of messaging would "be
in line with other markets." In Germany MMS messages will cost EUR0.39 per
message for up to 30KB and EUR0.99 or for up to 100KB. In the UK it is planned to
charge STG0.40 per message, but ten messages can be bought for STG3 per month and
25 messages for STG7 per month. 



MmO2 also plans to offer multimedia contents such as text, images and sound clips
relating to sport, news, finance and weather for around EUR0.23 per message. 



A handful of new MMS-enabled phones will be launched by O2 as part of the new
service, some of which will have digital cameras. These include the Nokia 3510,
Sony Ericsson T68i and Nokia 7650. Other handsets, such as the Sharp GX1, the
Nokia 6610, Nokia 7210, Sony Ericsson T300 and Siemens S55 will be available in
the near future.