P4 crosses the one million subscribers mark

CEO Chris Bannister said that the company wants to double this figure by the end of this year. "This should not be difficult. Holding on to the 1 million users we already have will be more tricky," he said. Bannister noted that at zł.24 for pre-paid users and zł.60-70 for subscribers, the company's ARPU, the sector's key measure, was above industry average. That is because P4 derives as much as 32% of its revenues from the more lucrative multimedia and data transmission services. At the same time, its zł.200 million expenditures on marketing were relatively small. The operator also managed to reduce the cost of acquiring new users considerably since its launch in March 2007. P4 will spend €1.1billion (zł. 3.96 billion) by 2010, the year it plans to break even, mainly on infrastructure development. It wants its HDSPA network to cover 40% of the country by the end of 2008. "By the summer we will have the biggest mobile broadband network in the country," Bannister said. P4 plans to cut rates for data transmission and multimedia services this year and to increase its international roaming revenues. Some 27% of P4's users are subscribers, with prepaid users accounting for the remaining 73%. (Parkiet, p. 8; Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 34; Puls Biznesu, p. 7; Rzeczpospolita, p. B4) R.M.