Vodafone NZ, which was flying high as an eagle since last two quarters, has down-tripped at the speed of knots to find 26,000 customers invisible in the third quarter of its 2011 financial year. The quarter was boxed on June 30.

A statement from Vodafone’s parent company reveals that the New Zealand telco lost 26,000 customers in the last quarter, drawing conjectures that the new rival 2degrees is giving Vodafone the shakes.

Though the loss embodies nearly 1% of Vodafone’s customer toll, which has now reduced to almost 2.458 million, the percentage of Vodafone users on traditionally affordable pre-paid plans has reduced to 67.6%.

Earlier this year, the new kid on market block, 2degrees announced that its customer base is reading 580,000, which wipes off nearly 11% of the market in general.

As an outlook, results in the third quarter of 2011 have dragged almost every mobile service provider into the same boat.

2degrees experienced a bulky loss last month, which it said was due to the aggressive marketing policy obligatory to make an evolution against giant rivals Telecom and Vodafone NZ.

Telecom, which had nearly 2.193 million mobile users as of March 31, half of which were still sticking on its CDMA network, is almost flat and not in a very brilliant stand with its CDMA network being switched next year.

Meanwhile, 2degrees, the newbie in the mobile community is reportedly ready to go for the broke, in order to surmount the mobile service behemoths like Vodafone and Telecom.