PTC sees customer base boom on back of prepaid Heyah

PTC, the owner of the Era mobile phone network, has announced its financial results for the first six months of 2004. As a result of introducing its Heyah prepaid service, PTC attracted 86% more new users than a year before and now boasts 7.5 million customers in total, which marks a growth of 34% on the previous year. Bogusław Kułakowski, PTC president, revealed that the company's revenues exceeded zł.3 billion, while its EBITDA amounted to zł.1.3 billion. Meanwhile, the Telecommunications and Post Regulations Office (URTiP) will today announce the rules by which the sale of the vacant UMTS and GSM 1800 mobile phone frequencies will be governed. PTC says it will lodge a claim for compensation If the URTiP chooses to exclude the three current market players from the bid. "If a new operator incurs less costs than we did, we will demand our money back," Maciej Rogalski, the head of PTC's legal department, announced. (Puls Biznesu, pp.1, 8; Parkiet, p. 3) E.B.