Poland: Voda Against National Roaming

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by Motel75

To be fair to Vodafone, Polkomtel is co-owned by three other Polish companies, none of which have any expertise in mobile telephony, and all of which are state-owned or -controlled.

Your knowledge of the Polish mobile market is quite good . But, a few words of explanation. As to the Polish Polkomtel shareholders - they really are state-owned or -controlled and without "any expertise in mobile telephony". But how could any Polish company have this expertise?. In 1996, when Plus and Era started, the only company of that kind was PTK Centertel operating NMT 450 network. Of course, licenses might be given to 100% foreign owned operators but there were some political obstacles :P.

Originally Posted by Motel75

(Poland's proposed new fourth provider would be another state-run affair; how many other EU countries have a situation like this?).

You mean a GSM 1800 licence for Telekomunikacja Kolejowa (Railway Telecom)? Finally, they didn't take the license :P. The "real" fourth provider is 100% private UMTS-only P4 (which has a GSM roaming agreement with Polkomtel)

Originally Posted by Motel75

They'll probably sell to Vodafone in the end, so the intention of buying TDC's share of Polkomtel was only to collude and sell it on to Vodafone at a profit. It's no wonder Voda is playing hardball. Plus has gone from being the #1 network to being the #3, something which they can't be happy about.

Yes, you're right. A few days ago, Polkomtel CEO said that their strategic goal is to sell Polkomtel to Voda. Anyway, there might be political problems. The currently ruling parties are "Catholic socialists" and they don't like large private property and especially foreign private property. It sounds stupid but I must say they aren't 100% wrong. E.g. selling Polish Telecom to France Telecom resulted in sinking the money obtained for shares in the budget hole, the same high prices and losing a few thousands jobs. It's hard to turn this into a political success :P