Poland, officially the Republic of
Poland (Polish: Polska or Rzeczpospolita Polska),
is a country located in Central
Europe, between Germany to
the west, the Czech
Republic and Slovakia to
the south, Ukraine and Belarus to
the east, and the Baltic
Sea, Lithuania,
and Russia (in
the form of the Kaliningrad
Oblast exclave)
to the north. Poland shares a maritime border with Denmark in
the Baltic Sea. Poland has been a member state of the European
Union since May
1, 2004.
Telephone System:
From the communist era Poland inherited an underdeveloped and outmoded system
of telephones, with some areas (e.g. in the extreme South East) being served
by manual exchanges. In December
2005 the last analog exchange was shut down. All telephone lines are
now served by modern fully computerised exchanges (Siemens EWSD, Alcatel
S12, Lucent 5ESS, Alcatel E10). The former state owned telephone monopoly
(TPSA) has been
mostly privatised, with France Telecom buying the largest share. Various
other companies have entered the fixed phone market, but generally aiming
for niches (e.g. Sferia with
fixed wireless, Netia covering
primarily business). Whilst prices have reduced and availability has increased
considerably since the introduction of competition, there is little sign
of TPSA's market share being seriously reduced.
The long waiting list for fixed line telephones helped in a boom in mobile
cellular telephone use and the majority of phones in Poland are now GSM based.
There are three competing networks with similar market share, Era, Orange
Polska and Plus
GSM. To this, in 2004, has been added one virtual operator Heyah,
which, at present, is actually fully owned by the operator of Era. Apart
from this, Centertel network
(actually the operator which runs Orange Polska) still runs an NMT
450i used now as WLL for
TPSA.
All mobile operators are running UMTS networks
in major cities: Warsaw, Łódź, Wrocław, Katowice, Kraków,
Poznań, Trójmiasto.
Master Service Contract 