Anna Strezynska informed about the drastic cut of wholesale charges, MTR, in TVN CNBC television.
“Today, MTR charge amounts to PLN 0.4. On May 1st 2010, it will amount to 0.15, PLN 0.07 more than planned today. But the reduction may be much faster in fact”, Anna Strezynska said.
The cut will make it cheaper to call from one mobile phone to another. This means that sales of telecoms will drastically cut. Today, 20 percent of sales of three biggest mobile operators is generated by MTR charges. With last year’s sales of the big three amounting to PLN 23.2bn, their sales would fall by PLN 2.5bn.
Telecoms are not happy with the changes.
“The proposal from UKE CEO is far from business and benchmarks. This is going to completely destabilize the Polish telecom market, making it completely unpredictable for investors in a period longer than several months”, Grazyna Piotrowska-Oliwa, PTK Centertel CEO said.
According to an agenda approved of last year, MTR charges which today amount to PLN 0.4 were supposed to fall to 0.33 on May 1st and to 0.21 in 2010.
After last year UKE had reduced MTR charges, calls from TP telecom dropped by 20 percent. Other operators followed the suit.
“We let new players onto the market in order to make prices fall”, Anna Strezynska explained.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.286)