Polish fixed line operator Netia has deployed 100G fibre across its network as it looks to benefit from a 40-fold increase in bandwidth. The operator has called on the Optical Networks business unit of Nokia Siemens Networks, a unit that the vendor agreed to sell to Marlin Equity Partners in December 2012.
As many of the world’s operators contend with the capacity crunch, some carriers are finding new purpose and a potential goldmine of use cases for legacy spectrum licenses.
At one time, the CDG (CDMA Development Group) was pushing the rapid adoption of CDMA2000 in what many perceived as rivalry against the 3GPP’s WCDMA standard. But with so many CDMA standard bearers migrating to LTE, the group has changed its focus to stay relevant, and is now heavily pushing the 450MHz band as a significant opportunity for spectrum and capacity poor mobile carriers.
Polish operators Polkomtel and Aero2 are working with Ericsson to expand their LTE and W-CDMA networks in the country. The operator will expand their networks in northern and western Poland as data consumption continues to surge across the nation.
Polish telecoms regulator UKE has announced plans to slash mobile termination rates (MTR) for operators in the country, in line with directives from the European Commission. T-Mobile Poland, Orange Poland and Polkomtel will have their MTR rates cut by 33 per cent at the beginning of 2013, from 0. 1223 zlotys ($0.04) per minute to 0.0826 zlotys per minute.
The Virgin Mobile brand is set to launch in Poland as entrepreneur Richard Branson’s firm eyes growth in the Central and Eastern Europe mobile market. Virgin had formed a holding company, Virgin Mobile Central and Eastern Europe in 2011 and is looking to launch an MVNO initially in Poland, in order to provide a platform to build on in the region.
Polish carriers Orange, T-Mobile and Polkomtel have banded together with local developers and academic institutions to create an ecosystem designed to address the growing competition posed by Over The Top (OTT) providers.
Orange’s Polish operation, PTK Centertel, and T-Mobile’s PolskaTelefoniaCyfrowa this week signed an agreement to share their radio access networks. The network will be managed by a new joint venture called NetWorkS! owned 50-50 by the two operators and responsible for the management, planning, support, development and maintenance.
Mobile operator Orange has expanded its mobile wallet offering to another market with a commercial offer targeting several thousand users in Poland.
Dominant Nordic telco TeliaSonera has confirmed a bid for Polish operator Polkomtel, joining a rumoured ten other operators (including Spain’s Telefonica and Norway’s Telenor) looking to expand into the area.
Polish mobile operators, Play (P4) and Orange are to form a joint venture dedicated to selling wholesale broadband access. The venture will allow both operators to sell services under a common name, rather than the seperate brands of P4 (Play) and PTK Centertel (Orange). The still to be named organisation will take part in the LTE tender for the provision of wholesale broadband data transmission.
Poland’s telecommunications regulator, the UKE, has begun a tender process for frequencies in the range 2500-2570/2620-2690MHz and 790-862MHz, which will enable operators to deploy LTE. The tender is expected to be carried out in mid-2011.
A lawyer by trade, specialising in Polish and European telecommunications and media law, Anna Strezynska was appointed president of the Polish communications regulatory body in May 2006.
The rolling out of 3G services in the 900MHz spectrum band, traditionally reserved for 2G operations, is making headway. This week, the world’s first HSPA+ commercial network in the 900MHz band launched in Poland.
Mobile operator Orange has struck a deal with dispute resolution tool and fact finding site Wikipedia in a bid to boost mobile data traffic.
Chris Bannister is CEO at Polish carrier Play, which launched into a saturated market two years ago. He talks to telecoms.com about the trials of the small independent and the dirty tricks he believes are being employed by powerful international incumbents.
Netia has switched its WiMAX focus from urban to rural areas as the regulator forces the incumbent to open up its broadband network to competitors.
Lean and MeanWith summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.
Cross-border opportunities are there, but Telenor has work to do in BulgariaPan-European operater group Telenor is making another move into Eastern Europe, this time buying Bulgaria’s Globul. The move makes sense for several reasons, but success won’t come easy in a country with high mobile penetration and a sluggish economy.
It is testament to Telstra’s aggressive approach to mobile broadband that an operator in a country of just over 23 million people should rank in the top ten operators worldwide in terms of LTE subscriber numbers. Mike Wright, Telstra’s executive director for networks and access technologies talks to Telecoms.com about the firm’s plans for further enhancing its LTE operation with fresh spectrum and LTE-Advanced capabilities.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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Calls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.