Report on the state of the telecommunications market in Poland in 2017
03 September 2018
How was the market impacted by ownership changes among operators, infrastructural investments, obligatory registration of prepaid numbers or implementation of RLAH?
We present the latest Report on the state of the telecommunications market in Poland in 2017, which is divided into two parts, the first concerning the market itself, and the latter – telecommunications infrastructure.
Mobile services unchanged
In 2017, similarly as in the preceding year, the value of the telecommunications market amounted to approx. PLN 39.5bn. The value of the internet segment was PLN 4.7bn, which is a slight decrease. The penetration with the broadband internet service was at the level of 103% per household. As in 2016, the service had 14.5m users, with cellular modems as the most popular technology for accessing the network.
Bundled services, which in 2017 were used by 10.15m people, are becoming ever more important. Over the year covered by the report, the number of bundled services users increased by 29%. As in the preceding year, “Mobile telephony + mobile internet” was the most popular bundle, chosen by over 60% of the users.
In the mobile telephony segment, the total number of SIM cards has been decreasing year after year. In 2017, it was 53.3m (less by 2.2m than in 2016), while the penetration was 138.6%. The revenues of the segment were the lowest in recent years and characterized by the highest decrease rate. The key event which impacted roaming prices was the implementation of the Roam Like At Home principle.
2017 was also another year when the significance of the fixed-line telephony continued to decline. The value of the segment was PLN 2.3bn, while the number of subscribers went down from 5.2m in 2016 to 4.8m.
More networks
The second part of the report dedicated to telecommunications infrastructure development also brings interesting data. There is a visible increase in the number of own telecommunications network nodes installed, by over 30k. The effect of the telecommunications market development and of the effectiveness of investments supported from public funds is a systematic decrease in the number of towns where there are no access nodes installed.
The development of telecommunications networks is mainly achieved by increasing the share of the optical fibre length in the total length of telecommunications lines. In 2017, the share of this technology was over 95%.
The possibility of accessing fixed-line internet with the minimum speed of 30 Mb/s is currently provided in approx. 33% of buildings. Access to the services of at least 100 Mb/s is currently provided for every tenth residential building in Poland; in 2016, it was every twelfth building. The offer of fixed-line internet is complemented by the LTE technology mobile internet whose share increased by approx. 2 pp and amounted to over 84% in 2017.
The number of localities where no operator declared coverage of fixed-line and radio networks decreased by 8%.
We hope you will enjoy reading the report.
