Consumers about the telecoms market

In December 2006, the Marketing Research Centre INDICATOR Sp. z o.o. (Centrum Badań Marketingowych INDICATOR Sp. z o.o.), commissioned by the Office of Electronic Communications, carried out a survey in order to learn how the telecommunications market was functioning and to collect information on consumer preferences regarding fixed-line, mobile, Internet access and broadcasting transmission services.

The survey was carried out on a representative sample composed of 1,616 respondents above 15 years old enabling the results of the survey to be translated into the entire population of Poland.

The main findings of the consumer survey carried out in 2006 are presented below:

Fixed-line market:

- The findings confirm high saturation level with respect to telecommunications services. A telephone, irrespective of the underlying technology, is owned by the great majority of the respondents (90%).

- A fixed-line phone is owned by 66% of the respondents.

- Poles most frequently use a home telephone for local calls. Such calls are made daily by more than a half of the respondents (51%). This fact proves that Poles stopped treating phone calls like a luxury perceiving them now as a natural way of communicating.

- A fixed-line telephone is most frequently used for voice calls. Dial-up Internet calls are infrequent.

- The lowest level of satisfaction with fixed-line operators is still caused by the offer price components.

- TP S.A. leads the fixed-line market. Its services are used by 90% of the fixed-line users. It is also the best recognised brand among telephone operators. It is quoted spontaneously by almost every respondent (97%).

- The brands ranking further in terms of their recognition are the three major competitors of Telekomunikacja Polska S.A.: Tele2, Netia and Dialog. These brands are often quoted by the respondents and the assisted awareness for them reaches more than 80% (Tele2), 60% (Netia) or 45% (Dialog).

- The findings show that the demand among fixed-line subscribers shows elasticity. Increases in line rental may effectively encourage subscribers to resign from the services offered by their existing provider.

- The respondents on average pay PLN 100 for their fixed-line phone.

Mobile market:

- The mobile penetration is at a similar level to fixed-line penetration. 64% of Poles have a mobile phone.

- Brand awareness for the three mobile operators is at a comparable level with spontaneous awareness at about 80% and assisted awareness exceeding 90%.

- SMS continues to be a very popular means of communications and enjoys great popularity. Short text messages are sent by more than 90% of mobile users. A half of that number send MMS (43%).

- The price offer and discounts are the main criteria taken into account when choosing a mobile operator.

- The total average monthly charge for using a mobile phone is significantly higher for post-paid subscribers (PLN 91) than for pre-paid users (PLN 49) or mixed system users (PLN 54).

Internet market:

- The availability of Internet in Poland is diversified. Almost half of Poles have used Internet during the last month (45%), out of which the biggest number have accessed the web at home or at work.

- The majority of the respondents with Internet access at home use always-on services: Neostrada offered by the incumbent (40%) or services offered by cable operators (18%). Technological progress has not affected the speed: among the subscribers to the always-on service only 13% of the respondents have access to transfer capacities of 1 Mb/s or more.

- In the Internet communicators market two applications are used much more often than the tools offered by competitive companies. This is Gadu-Gadu for text messages (85%) and Skype for voice calls.

TV market:

- The majority of the respondents use traditional terrestrial analogue television (53%), every third home has cable TV (33%) and every fifth respondent has satellite TV (20%).

- Few homes have digital TV (11%), however certain respondents are interested in the digital TV operators’ offer.