Complaints about Irish phone operators have almost doubled over the last 15 months, new data from the telecoms regulator shows.

The number of complaints from frustrated mobile and home broadband customers rose by 83pc over the last “five quarters” as operators battle to upgrade networks and billing systems and try out new services.

Among mobile operators, Eir Mobile has almost twice as many complaints as either Vodafone or Three as a percentage of its customers, according to ComReg.

Billing is the telco’s biggest cause of upset among its users, although its overall number of complaints decreased marginally in the last three months.

As for home broadband and telephone services, Eir and Vodafone At Home both have more than three times the number of complaints faced by the third most griped-about provider, Sky, measured as a percentage of customers. Virgin Media has the lowest number of complaints per capita.

Billing is also the biggest problem facing fixed line operators.

Billing problems include disputed charges, invoicing issues and refunds.

Comreg says that it logged 4,153 “issues” in the last three months alone, with over 15,000 “issues” logged in the last 15 months.

The data about complaints come amid expanding networks and new services. Eir has passed over 300,000 new fibre-to-the-home rural broadband premises and has just launched a new budget mobile service called GoMo with its own separate billing system.

Vodafone is slowly rolling out a fibre-to-the-home network through Siro, its joint venture with the ESB.

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