NOM and TPSA to end feud this week

Independent telecom Niezależny Operator Międzystrefowy (NOM) and national telecom giant Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) will sign an agreement this week ending their feud over domestic long-distance (DLD) services, Marcin Gruszka, NOM's spokesman told the WBJ last week. The battle started last July when NOM, the first independent telecom operator to offer DLD service as part of Poland's ongoing telecom market liberalization, said that TPSA had impeded its efforts to offer services for 13 months after it received an operating license. NOM had also filed a complaint with the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), charging the national incumbent with unfair business practices and demanded zł. 81 million ($19.75 million) in damages from TPSA in lost revenue for blocking the opening of the telecom market. But under the agreement this week, that pecuniary claim would be dropped, Gruszka said. Likewise, TPSA would abandon an appeal it originally filed with the former Communications Ministry, he said.

Piotr Zabadeusz, who works in TPSA's press bureau, would not comment on the matter or confirm that the agreement would be made public this week. NOM was the first operator to offer DLD services. The now defunct Communications Ministry awarded it an operating license in January 2000, but NOM had to conduct long, contentious negotiations with TPSA for an interconnection agreement needed to plug into the incumbent's national network. NOM, which uses the 8,000-kilometer fiber-optic network of telecom company Tel-Energo, had also accused TPSA of giving it too few connection points to offer countrywide service. In addition, the agreement would also solve the problem of the backlog of bills for NOM's clients. NOM previously said TPSA had an obligation to bill its clients for their services but the incumbent operator declined to send the invoices. The Infrastructure Ministry had intervened in the billing dispute in January after the Telecommunications Regulatory Office (URT) failed to resolve the matter last year. "Who will send the invoices is not clear now, but it looks like it will be our invoices and not TPSA's," Gruszka said, but stressed that the billing issue was not the main point of the agreement. He declined to reveal the agreement's other aspects.

About 4 million of NOM's institutional clients, which have so far gotten a free ride with their DLD calls, would receive their bills at the beginning of April, and thereafter NOM would have to send its own invoices, Gruszka said. Customers owed NOM about zł. 200 million ($48.8 million) as of the end of February, he said, but the amount could increase to zł. 220 million-zł. 230 million ($53.7 million-$56.1 million) through March. NOM is the largest competitor to TPSA in the DLD market with about 20% market share. The company is owned by the Polish Power Grid (PSE), which has a 50% stake, its telecom subsidiary Tel-Energo, with 15%, and national oil company Polski Koncern Naftowy Orlen (PKN Orlen) with 35%. NOM was established in 1999 to take advantage of the liberalization of the telecom market. Its strategy is to offer additional telecom services, including data transmission, Internet services and international connections.