STAFF at Virgin Mobile were celebrating this week with the news the company has topped two million customers in record time.

The firm, which has an expected turnover of a quarter of a billion pounds for 2002, hit the 2,013,382 mark on Monday and said customer numbers are rising 70 per cent year on year.

Virgin Mobile has broken UK sales records by reaching the two million customers mark in under three years.

The announcement makes it the fastest-growing network in Europe. It took more than four years for Orange to hit two million customers, T-Mobile in excess of five years and O2 and Vodafone well over a decade .

Virgin Mobile's Sir Richard Branson said: "The astonishing fact about Virgin Mobile reaching two million customers is not that we achieved this figure, but that we did so in record time.

"Virgin Mobile has thrived and prospered, thanks to the dedication of its staff and its great value services. We have invested £200 million efficiently and have acquired two million profitable customers I defy any other mobile network to beat that."

Virgin Mobile is now established as the most successful virtual network operator in the world and is the UK's fifth network. The firm employs 1,500 staff on three sites, in Trowbridge, London and Daventry.