Fraudulent subscribers ruin mobile telecom operators

Mobile telecom operators are losing millions of zlotys every month due to unpaid telephone bills and bad debts. Last year fraudulent subscribers cost the operators more than zl.40 million, and this year the figure may be even higher. The two most common tricks are the purchase of mobile phones using counterfeit documents or by borrowing the genuine documents of someone who will not pay the bills, but who "rents"the cheaters the documents for as much as zl.100. Polish courts are concerned about the trend, as they are now flooded with thousands of suits against fraudulent subscribers that could ultimately bring the whole judicial system to a halt. "In the last two years we filed 100,000 suits with the courts, with an average of five to seven thousand,"said Robert Niczewski, spokesman for Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC) telecom operator. Other sector players also mentioned similar figures. As the result of a concerted effort against subscription fraud, PTC has managed to reduce its bad debt growth to 4.0% at the end of 2000, down from 5.6% in 1999. (Prawo i Gospodarka, pp.1,2) J.K.