Cheap text messages yesterday helped Virgin Mobile to maintain its claim to be the UK's fastest growing mobile phone operator.

The company attracted 231,554 new customers in April, May and June, a 35 per cent rise on quarterly growth levels seen at the same point in 2002, giving it a total of almost 2.9 million users, up 61 per cent on a year ago.

The firm, which is a joint venture with Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, said it expected that the growth rate would beat "most, if not all" of its competitors. Other operators are due to issue figures in the next few days.

However, Virgin's average revenues per user figure fell to £135 from £136 in the first quarter partly as a result of arrangements ahead of a Competition Commission ruling making operators cut termination charges, the amount they charge rival customers to call users of their network.

Virgin Mobile added that profits before one-off items in the first six months of the year reached £42 million, compared with £16 million for all of last year.

The figures follow a record showing in the first three months of the year when it added more than 250,000 customers.

Virgin Mobile, a so-called "virtual" operator as it uses T-Mobile's network, said competitive pricing, such as its 3p tariff for text messages to other Virgin customers, was helping it attract business from rivals. Other competitive policies include free voicemail retrieval.

Sir Richard Branson said: "As the UK market has stopped growing, our ongoing dramatic growth reflects Virgin Mobile's attractiveness to switchers, keen to leave other networks for a better, fairer deal.

"In particular, our new 3p text tariff is proving to be really popular with consumers, both existing and new, and is helping Virgin Mobile maintain its market lead in terms of sales growth."

Virgin specialises in the pay-as you-go market with 90 per cent of its customers on straight pre-pay deals and the remaining ten per cent using a hybrid arrangement with regular bills but without the monthly charges paid on contracts.