MOBILE phone carrier Vodafone Australia says it added 117,000 for its fiscal fourth quarter to the end of March, pushing the company’s total customer numbers beyond four million for the first time.

The company is claiming a total increase for the year of 323,000 direct customers, or 9.6 per cent growth over its’ year-ago numbers.

Vodafone closed its 2007/2008 financial year with 3,690,000 direct customers and 341,000 Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) customers, bringing the total number of customers connected to Vodafone Australia to 4,031,000.

The company said service revenue grew 7.4 per cent year-on-year, despite the sharp regulatory decline in termination rates from 15c to 12c during 2006/07, and from 12c to 9c during 2007/08.

Despite its continue push for new customers – and leading the discounting charge among the major telco’s – Vodafone says its ARPU (average revenue per user) remain “broadly in line with its 2006/07” financial year at $51.50 – about one per cent lower than a year ago.

“Serving the daily mobile communications needs of four million Australians is a big responsibility and a source of enormous pride for Vodafone Australia. In a tightening telco market at so-called saturation point, we’ve added more than half-a-million customers in the last two years, maintained momentum on ARPU by providing customers with more of what they actually want and sustained solid growth in service revenues,” said Vodafone chief executive Russell Hewitt.

“Whilst Optus and Telstra have endured significant margin erosion over the past 18 months, Vodafone Australia continues to build a strong and profitable investment in Australia,” he said.