Snatching TP's subscribers

Alternative fixed-line operator Tele2 has received requests from 130,000 customers in the first two weeks since it began offering subscription services on January 2. "We are breaking TP's decades-long monopoly," Tele2's president, Piotr Nesterowicz, declared.

Subscription in Tele2 has been made possible by the Office of Electronic Communications' (UKE) president, Anna Streżyńska, who issued a decision obliging TP to rent out its lines (and thus transfer subscriptions) to Tele2 if customers wished it.

Until now, a person using Tele2's services received two bills - a subscription bill from TP and a telephone bill from Tele2. Under the new system, according to Tele2 spokesperson Karol Wieczorek, customers will benefit from wholesale line rental, meaning that they will be able to choose the operator freely and receive only one telephone bill. "We currently have 70,000 clients," he said. "By the end of January the number should jump to 100,000."

But this is just the beginning. "We plan that in two years 80 percent of our users will be paying subscriptions," Nesterowicz said. "We hope that the client base will grow in that period," the president added. Tele2 currently has around one million users.

Offering subscriptions that are cheaper than TP's by 10-25 percent is one way to achieve that goal. At the beginning of this month Tele2 signed an agreement with TP to use the latter's infrastructure to launch broadband internet services which, according to Nestorowicz, will be "competition for [TP's] Neostrada." Nestorowicz concluded: "We hope [subscription and broadband internet] will be helpful weapons in future market battles."