News

Polish Mobile Telecommunications market

16/12/2011
50 million Mobile subscribers by 2014



IDATE is proposing a market report on the booming Polish Telecoms market, with an analysis focused on polish mobile operators namely Orange, PTC, Polkomtel and P4.

At the end of 2010, there were 46.6 million mobile subscriptions in Poland, translating to a penetration rate of 121.3%, up from 117.2% a year before. According to the European Commission, the Polish market penetration is in the 7th bottom place among the 27 countries of the Community in 2010. The fixed network market was impacted by the rapidly growing segment of mobile telephony, which is a substitute for services provided at a fixed location. Therefore the segment is characterized by a steady reduction in its value in terms of revenue and in the number of subscribers. On another side, the Internet market in Poland was developing rapidly seen in the growing value of the segment and the number of clients. Nearly 6 million people had broadband fixed-line access and approximately 2,8 million mobile Internet access.

Prospects are bright for the next two years especially on the data segment. Indeed, mobile broadband services are flourishing and adoption rates are strong. The prospects for Poland telecom development reside in the ability to invest in solutions based on NGN. Particularly, the coverage of all inhabited areas of the country, will expand the availability of advanced services and will be a guarantee of high quality telecom infrastructure.

• Orange and PTC benefit from experience of their mother company respectively France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom and thus from the reputation brand. Recently, PTC has rebranded its post-paid offers to T-Mobil to take advantage of its German parent group's global image. Polkomtel has just been acquired by Polish media Zygmunt Solorz-Zak and was previously owned by Vodafone. On the other hand, P4 is planned to be divested by its owners.

• In terms of operational status, Orange, PTC and Polkomtel represent quite 90% of the global mobile market. They are established operators within the Polish market. Orange and PTC have strong footprints with their fixed and mobile integrated services and Polkomtel an enterprise network services.

• As a new entrant such as Yoigo in Spain or Free Mobile in France, the position of P4 is challenging as it has to conclude roaming agreements with its rivals (Polkomtel) to increase its network coverage. P4 also adopts an aggressive pricing strategy to size subscriber base and thus attracts middle and low end users unlike its high reputable competitors.

• P4 has decided to select a unique radio access network equipment supplier namely Huawei to deploy its infrastructure. Generally MNO prefers to rely on multiple suppliers. It needs to be mentioned that P4’s EUR1.1 billion network development program has been heavily supported by the China Development Bank (CDB).

Finally P4 is today in a challenging position. Indeed we have to point out their new entrant position and then a certain lack of telecom operation experiences as well as a small size of their current network and related subscribers base. Concerning their financial structure it has to be mentioned that their also depending heavily on vendor financing. Furthermore it is surprising that the current stakeholders planned to divest the operator since 2010 and that no major telecom players have shown interest not for the case of Polkomtel. All those factors make P4 position not comfortable today on the Polish mobile market.

>The report is available upon request.  
  Ask for a PDF free copy: Isabel Jimenez, i.jimenez@idate.org