Poland becomes fourth LTE country
Three new entrants combine to launch services in 1.8GHz, using Huawei kit
Published: 7 September, 2010
READ MORE: Spectrum | Poland | LTE
Poland has become the fourth country in the world to have a commercial LTE network. Two cellcos in the eastern European country, CenterNet and Mobyland, have collaborated to launch LTE services in the 1.8GHz band, rather than waiting for new spectrum allocations such as the more common 2.6GHz. This shows the European LTE picture becoming fragmented even at this early stage, with Germany providers focusing on recently auctioned digital dividend frequencies around 800MHz and pioneer TeliaSonera mainly using 2.6GHz.
Poland follows Telia's deployments in Sweden and Norway, and the roll-out of LTE in Uzbekistan by the Nordic carrier's UCell arm, as well as by MTS. CenterNet and Mobyland are both new entrants, which acquired spectrum in 2007 and have so far pursued a strategy of pushing GSM into underserved niche markets. Now they are looking to add significant value to their propositions by moving directly to 4G, leapfrogging the four main cellcos - PTK Centertel (Orange), Polkomtel (Plus), PTC (Era) and P4 (Play). The two newcomers were recently acquired by a third small player, Aero2, which has been building an HSPA+ network for about a year and also holds LTE spectrum. The combined resources of these three, and the early move to LTE, should make them stronger against the main players.
CenterNet and Mobyland plan to have 700 LTE base stations in operation by the end of 2010, with the network aiming to cover almost 20% of the population at that point. They are buying their kit from Huawei. Their main focus will be on rural areas, as a fixed broadband alternative as well as mobile network, and the key business model will be wholesale - another increasingly apparent hallmark of 4G, and a way in which new entrants can compete with the big names, as we already see in the US with Clearwire's WiMAX system and LightSquared's wholesale LTE plans.
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