A private Polish-US company, RP Telecom SA, plans to invest up to $2,000m to build modern telephone networks in Poland and compete with the state-owned telecommunications monopoly, Reuter reports from Pila. RP Telecom SA says it has already embarked on construction of an $80m telephone network for 100,000 subscribers in Pila in the northwest of the country, with capital from the World Bank’s International Finance Corp, and says it plans to install eight other telephone networks across Poland. The plans pose the first major challenge to the decades-old state monopoly of telecommunications, which has now been formally ended. We will become a big competitor for the state telecommunications as regards local networks, Roman Jarocki, a Telecom board member, said, adding that the company will provide telephones for 2m inhabitants over the next four years, compared with the state-owned Telekomunikacja Polska SA’s current subscriber base of only 4m. The International Finance Corp provided about 60% of the financing for the Pila venture. The rest was raised by RP Telecom and local authorities. The World Bank’s commercial arm, which has invested about $200m in private business ventures in Poland, is expected to acquire a 15% stake in RP Telecom.
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