Poland: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview

Overview

Up until recently Poland’s market is has been dominated by France Telecom, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries (Orange, Plus and Era respectively). This quarter however all three of these operations have shown a drop in subscribers and newcomer Play has continued to gain ground.

Orange

Orange Polska is the brand name of Polish mobile network operator operator, PTK Centertel. It was founded in December 1991 to operate a first generation analog network under the brand name Centertel.

It then launched Idea, the countries third GSM network using the GSM 900/1800 standard. In 2001 the 1G analog network was switched off and Idea became Idea Centertel and former analog customers were offered GSM contracts.

Although still formally known as PTK Centertel, the company took on the Orange brand name on the 19 September 2005.

Orange Polska also operates WLAN networks in Poland, and is phasing in a UMTS network.
Orange Polska remains the country’s largest operator with 13.9 million subscribers.

Plus

Plus is one of three major mobile telephony networks in Poland, providing its services under trade names of Plus (post-paid services), Simplus (pre-paid), MixPlus (mix of post-paid and pre-paid services), iPlus (wireless Internet access) and Sami Swoi (pre-paid).

The network is owned by Polkomtel, a company owned by Vodafone (19.61 percent), TDC A/S (19.61 percent), PKN Orlen(19.61 percent), KGHM Polska Miedź (19.61 percent), Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne (17.56 percent) and Węglokoks (4.00 percent). It operates GSM 900/1800, UMTS and WLAN networks throughout Poland and had over 13.4 million customers as of 2Q 2008.

Era

Era is the main brand name of Poland’s largest mobile phone network operator, Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC), which has run a GSM network since September 1996. The company is 93 percent owned by the German telecommunications firm T-Mobile. PTC also operates a second prepaid brand, Heyah, aimed primarily at the youth market.

In April 2004 it launched a 3G 2100 network and by the end of 2004, Era had over 8.6 million. Towards the end of 2005, Era became the first mobile phone operator in Poland (and eighth in Europe) to have 10 million customers.

T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom’s are currently involved in a law suit brought by Vivendi concerning majority control, but T-Mobile has said that should they win the dispute Era will be re-branded to T-Mobile Polska.

Play

Play is the brand name of Poland’s fourth mobile phone network operator, and is owned by P4. In March 2007 it began operating a UMTS network in Poland’s major cities. In the rest of the country Play uses Plus GSM’s network for GSM coverage.

In September 2008 we reported that TeliaSonera may be interested in purchasing Play. Play is the smallest operator in Poland, with 800,000 subscribers at the end of June 2008.