Taking to the air

Netia won a tender for Wi-Max frequencies back in July 2005 and it wants to use the technology to reach customers with the same services it already offers, only at a lower cost. "This will enable us to break free from the shackles of limiting infrastructure," said Netia's president, Wojciech Mšdalski.

"We hope to have the Wi-Max network in Poland's 10 largest cities by the end of this year," Mšdalski added. The company wants to devote around half of this year's planned zł.200-300 million for investments to create the network. The bulk of the expenses of setting up the Wi-Max infrastructure will be incurred this year and in 2007. The company will continue to focus on  business clients - this segment accounts for 76 percent of Netia's revenues.

This year Mšdalski expects the company's revenue to increase by around one to two percent, a couple of percentage points below last year's growth rate of five percent. In 2005 the company had revenues of zł.908.6 million and

a net profit of zł.60.2 million, in comparison to zł.865 million and zł.159 million in 2004 respectively. Mšdalski underlined that if it wasn't for the new bookkeeping standards, which enabled taxes and consolidation costs to not be included in the 2004 report, its 2005 net profit would be 23 percent higher than that of 2004.