Netia has sights set on Polish households

Netia, Poland's second-largest fixed network operator, recently extended its managed-services contract with Ericsson by three years. By putting its network operation in reliable hands, the operator can focus on its major asset: private households.

Poland is now fully mobile. The penetration rate of mobile services is as high as 120 percent, because people are signing up for multiple subscriptions. But rather than competing for new mobile subscribers, Netia has chosen a different path. It is going after fixed broadband household consumers, a market that for many years was monopolized.

Miroslaw Godlewski, CEO of Netia, says: "We have been very active in the development of this newly-available market and the result is that there has been a fast increase of broadband services in our country. The speeds are rising and prices for broadband access are also dropping quickly – which makes it more affordable, so more people are signing up for services."

The operator recently joined the trend of bundling services. Instead of just selling broadband as before, Netia is now packaging its services with unlimited calls subscriptions and other fixed voice packages. Some companies have already started upselling the third service, TV, though not always IPTV, and bundling with other technologies, such as satellite. Netia is getting ready to bundle three services and offering it to more and more users.

Netia has been the biggest beneficiary of the deregulation of the market. In the past three years, it has taken a 30 percent market share of net additions and has been the fastest growing company in terms of providing broadband services to new users. This also means that Netia has been growing revenue – which is not very common among telecom companies.

So what type of support does Netia need from Ericsson?

Godlewski says: "Part of the support is already happening due to the big outsourcing contract that we just signed with Ericsson. Being a fast growing company and juggling a number of priorities, it's crucial for us to be able to hand over the more stable part of the business to reliable hands. Helping us with some of the dilemmas – how, when, and in what way we should move into the next generation network – and then helping us making that transformation will be vital. For a local company like Netia, it's not obvious how this has been done at other companies. It’s very beneficial for us to get help from a global company like Ericsson."