Figures for the last three months show that one in five people now own a mobile phone in the UK.

Vodafone, the UK's largest mobile phone service added 933,000 customers to its subscription base over the last three months, while Cellnet also showed strong growth with 658,000 new customers.

Orange, the UK's third largest mobile phone operator notched-up 512,000 new connections and Cable and Wireless, which owns the One 2 One service, said it had added 439,000 new customers.

These were record growth figures for the three companies.

Pay-as-you-go proves popular

Two-thirds of Vodafone's new UK customers, or 755,000, signed up for the pay-as-you-talk option, which allows people to pre-pay their phone bills in advance. It was the biggest sales increase in Vodafone's history.

The company also saw buoyant sales in its overseas markets, which added 633,000 customers in the quarter.

The company now has 4.8m UK subscribers and 4.2m overseas, a 77% increase in its customer base over the year.

"We confidently expect to see market penetration rates of over 50% in all of our major markets within the next four years," Vodafone Chief Executive Chris Gent said.

"The astonishing success of prepay services around the world has rapidly accelerated the growth in mobile phone markets and greatly assisted us in achieving a record year for customer growth," he added.

Orange said it had added 512,000 new customers in the fourth quarter of 1998, taking its customer base up to 2.162m users.

Among the new subscribers, 329,000 were pre-pay customers and 183,000 were contract customers, the company said.

The fourth quarter growth rate was more than double the rate in the third quarter and more than the total growth achieved in 1997, Orange said.