Sunday, October 6, 2013

Plus, T-mobile, Orange, Play: Bandwidth woes - Newsweek Poland

Polish GSM operators beat up a precious toy – radio frequencies. The dispute could be resolved quickly mother, the Office of Electronic Communications. But every child believes that his mother favored sibling.

First, some more difficult concepts.

frequency – space in the ether, which allows you to offer customers more and more advanced mobile services. Currently, phone calls and text messages are now properly passé from a business point of view. It’s not even that young people prefer to sit on fejsie. But the minute a call from the cell gives the highest net profit of 10-12 cents. Quite a lot, but much less than a few years ago. To make matters worse, more and more people have the packages, so that speaks for free to selected numbers.

Living Network Play. Photo. PAP / Radek Parsley

Living Network Play. Fig. PAP / Radek Parsley

more profitable to sell mobile access to the Internet. Earnings is the greater, the less cost – per user – the construction of a modern telecommunications infrastructure. The problem is that Poland is not Hong Kong, where millions of customers build their nests on a patch of land. Quite a country and – at least in places – not very densely populated. Therefore, wireless internet best build on the Vistula River in the 800-900 MHz frequency because one transmitter operating in this band may cover an area four times larger than, say, one that operates on 2100 MHz. The conclusion is that the frequencies are divided into very valuable and virtually worthless. Wherein said first always either be purchased or waste already in the paws of competition.

Operator – large telecommunications company. I used to have money in abundance, now struggling with declining profitability of mobile business (causes – see above). From his point of view: technology leader, a respected employer and taxpayer loyal and generous patron of the way of culture. From the point of view of competition: market laggard, the parasite and the miser, in addition to the capital of shady origin. A choice of German, French, Swedish or Cyprus.

regulator – the Office of Electronic Communications, in short UKE. Officially – State agency appointed to watch over the competition in the Polish telecommunications and dealer licenses for spectrum usage. Unofficially – anti-market monopoly fifth column affirmation of our rivals nietrafnymi administrative decisions.

LTE – English Long Term Evolution. If you know what that is, you are either a stock market analyst dealing with a telecommunications company or run a blog about cells. You could possibly also be a member of the LTE service, which is super-fast mobile broadband, but you would have to first move to the center of a big city. Statistically, within the LTE population of nearly six out of ten Poles. But statistically that each of us is half woman and half man.

monopoly – it’s just simple: the constant aim of the competition procedures.

class=”c5″> Group holding band

Without this glossary difficult to understand what is happening for a few weeks in the Polish telecommunications. And what’s with all the thunderous statements.

“Group Polkomtel – Midas by concentrating vast amounts of frequency in one hand has a lot more potential than any of its competitors alone” – thunder T-Mobile in a statement.

Group Polkomtel – Midas by concentrating vast amounts of frequency in one hand has a lot more potential than any of its competitors alone “- thunder T-Mobile

That mysterious group is, in fact, Sigmund The entrepreneur, owner of both Polkomtel PLUS GSM network operator and mutual fund Midas, which controls three smaller telecommunications companies: Aero 2, Centernet and Mobyland.

richest Poles did not give himself a blow grits – the same monopolistic scheming criticizes competing operators Orange and T-Mobile, who recently joined their telecom infrastructure. “I think that tend to create a monopoly. Each of these operators is currently at 30 percent. market, a total of 60 per cent. With the approval of the OCCP eliminate competition “- warned recently in an interview.

In order to understand the full context of this exchange, you need to bring to the stage yet Sferia company, also in part owned by Solorz. The holiday was signed with the Ministry of Administration and Digitization settlement in a dispute with a frequency that got to build a telecommunications network a few years ago. She had, but as soon as they received it, it turned out that without them it is impossible to build a modern railway communication system GSM-R.

Sferia eventually given to other frequencies, but the owners still put Poland before an international arbitral tribunal. In July of this year, so the resort administration waved his hand and as compensation awarded her about one-fifth of valuable 800 MHz frequency band, which recently released the television after the transition to digital broadcasting. Polish mobile operators crave these frequencies as a kite rain, and because they are ideally suited for the construction of a network LTE. Broke so inferno, which fall long been unheard arguments about the origin of telecoms capital, the state protectionism and quietly up to avoid taxes.

Last week, T-Mobile has sent a formal complaint to the European Commission on the state agreement with Sferia. Earlier, in an open letter to the head of the Office of Electronic Communications Magdalena Gaj heads of Orange, Playa and T-Mobile wrote that the settlement “is in stark contrast to the standards of openness and transparency,” and diplomatically left space for a signature … Zygmunt Solorz. Employees Sferia zrewan?owali to rivals, highlighting in the media that the group’s attacks Solorz interested in backing a foreign capital from the market last Polish telecom operator. At the dictum “alien” with T-Mobile and Orange, in turn, reminded that Solorz Admittedly, it has Polish citizenship, but telecommunications and media empire controlled by a network of companies and foundations spread of Cyprus until after Sweden.

class=”c5″> Highway for telecom

Now all this will have to find the UKE. Nominally, Orange and T-Mobile have many more frequencies (total of up to 75 MHz) than Solorz (58.2 MHz), but Polkomtel and three investment funds controlled by Midas has to handle them almost two times less than the total of treated clients rivals. This gives companies a competitive advantage Solorz because less congested network is also higher speed data transmission, which is something we are very anxious customers. Especially those outside the big cities, not reached by cable TV with high speed internet broadband. For them the only chance at a fairly modern network access may be just LTE, and Polkomtel no secret that to use parts of the 800 MHz band, which probably soon get.

Identical plans

spins a competition. For all the key is how UKE 800 MHz split between telecoms. – 9 MHz band as a whole is the operator worth much more than three pieces of 3 MHz – explains prof. Witold Ho?ubowicz from the University. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. – Ether is like a highway, the wider the bandwidth, the more you accelerate on it.

this dispute each selected such arguments to show that he was the most injured

why Polkomtel wants to persuade the regulator to assigning a new band, treated the Orange and T-Mobile as one company, reducing the pool of frequencies. And given the appropriate calculation: if the terms of the auction will not change, Orange and T-Mobile in the most valuable for operators of the ether (800-900 MHz) will have a total of up to 35.8 MHz. Polkomtel and Midas – up to 19 MHz and Play – top 10 Competitors, of course, have a completely different calculation. They show that the group is no longer Solorz even a scrap of ether.

class=”c5″> Combing ether

– In this dispute, each selected such arguments to show that he was the most injured – smiling Thomas Kulisiewicz the company Audytel Polish telecommunications market. – In one of the operators have been right. The Polish ether is a mess, a remnant of a time when it seemed that the fight against big telecoms monopoly will result in the emergence of a number of smaller competitors.

Meanwhile, Europe is moving in the opposite direction. After the smaller players – such as the Swedish Tele2 – remained mostly memories. Big telecoms megaoperatorów together in order to reduce operating costs, and Brussels is increasingly mentioned the establishment of a pan-European provider of telecommunications infrastructure, which throughout the Union would offer the same conditions to all access to the telecommunications companies.

idea looks good on paper. Probably will be a small drop in prices of telecommunications services, and certainly improve their quality, because the frequencies will be used much more efficiently than at present. From the highway, which is the ether, disappear marking who and where the band could go in their place have arisen while the gate entry fee. The movement – no matter how big – rozk?ada?by always on all lanes. Another idea involves putting the powers of national regulators directly to the European Commission. – Brussels could even move operators from frequency to frequency, if such a change would be in the interest of European customers – explains Anna Stre?y?ska, former President of UKE. – Evicted from the occupied frequency operator entitled to receive compensation in return.

The problem is that the governments of most countries, several years ago, nearly tore the skin of the operators who have fought tooth and nail with a frequency of the third generation telephony. In Western Europe, the UMTS license fees went into thick billion. Our operators had put up for this purpose at 650 million euros, and it is only because Poland abandoned the open auction to give the home telecoms chances of winning. And even today asking price auction for 800 MHz was set at 250 million z?! From what Faced with the crisis Europe would now pay compensation for nationalized de facto frequency

Minister of Finance Minister and his colleagues in other European capitals probably would accept only one solution. A special commemorative tax.

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