Motorola tunes in Poland's radio market

This is Motorola's first systems investment here, said James Osborn, vice president and general manager of Motorola's international network services division.
Specific figures of Motorola's investment were not disclosed. Osborn said Motorola's 38.7% stake in Uni-Net, a national radio trunking operator, is roughly proportional to its long-term participation in the $5 million investment plan. That brings the unofficial figure to slightly less than $2 million.
Development plans include expanding the network and hiring additional staff mainly to market services.
"The real motivation is to help the radio market develop," Osborn said.
Uni-Net currently holds a 25-year contract from Telekomunikacja Polska SA to provide radio trunking over its RADIO-Net network to 20 Polish cities. Uni-Net's service area covers 45% of the Polish population, according to Uni-Net.
The radio trunking service offers up to one-third savings over mobile cellular services for companies requiring dispatch-type communication, such as public utilities, transport and courier companies, radio network experts say.
Uni-Net's two-way trunking system uses automatic sharing of a pool of radio channels. That pool allows greater communication speed and efficiency as users automatically are switched to unused channels.
Motorola negotiated its bid downward during the final days of dealing.
"We're just trying to get the right balance of risk and reward," Osborn said. "We're very, very keen on Poland."
Osborn said that with the current 1,000 users, the challenge ahead is how to develop the market. Penetration rates for wireless communication including cellular, paging and radio trunking can reach 20% of the population in some markets, industry experts say. In Germany, an estimated 5% of the population use wireless communication systems.
While Motorola and partner RP Telekom have not announced plans to bid for the national GSM licenses, the agreement signed last week strengthens R.P. Telekom's market position and would allow Motorola to reuse Uni-Net's existing facilities, an industry source said.
R.P. Telekom, founded in 1990, is currently building 11 local telephone networks from Torun in the north to Katowice in the south and Chelm in eastern Poland. The company estimates that by 1997, it will have invested more than $500 million to install 700,000 new telephone lines countrywide.
Motorola attributes about two-thirds of it $22.2 billion total 1994 revenues to wireless business. Motorola's investment in Uni-Net, while minuscule in comparison to global revenues, is the company's second move into a service provider.
P.D. Striplin contributed information for this report.