If the consortium B Four, a.s., succeeds in a public tender for a license to operate the third mobile operator in Slovakia, it will offer its customers unlimited number of free minutes for inland calls within its own network for a price of several hundreds of crowns per month. It also wishes to offer a digital television in mobile in DVB-H format in the future.
"Unlimited calls are a key strategy of our joining the Slovak mobile market,” said Ing. Miroslav Čuřín, Board Chairman and Director General of the Czech joint-stock company Radiokomunikace, being a 50% shareholder of B Four, today.
An objective of this aggressive business policy is to acquire a 15% share in the Slovak market. "To achieve this aim, we reckon with reservation of several hundreds of million EUR to establish the required infrastructure. Specific amount, however, depends on many factors, for instance, on agreements with the existing mobile operators or Slovak Rádiokomunikácie on sharing their constructions and facilities."
"Both companies have a very strong financial background. We are jointly prepared to finance the establishment of a network and its operation," said Marek Ondrejka, Investment Director of Penta Investments, a.s. that holds the remaining 50% of shares in B Four.
"One of the principal advantages of our bid is the power of a local player, who knows client’s needs well. We are not a part of a global holding, and the fact that decisions are adopted in Bratislava and not in foreign headquarters we consider to be our key advantage, moreover, we are fully focusing our activities and targets on the Slovak market. We do not believe that someone, who comes to Slovakia to only stick a small flag of a conquered territory, is suitable as the third operator for the Slovak market in a status of high penetration," Marek Ondrejka added.
Concurrently, its ability to establish a network as soon as possible, which will provide for a wide coverage of citizens by a mobile signal, will be a significant factor of a success of the new mobile operator in the Slovak market. Both experience in building infrastructures and cognizance of local particularities play an important role. Radiokomunikace disposes of over forty-year experience in this field and Penta has been operating in the local market for 12 years.
In its bid, B Four undertook to put the third mobile network into operation within 9 months following the granting a license subject to a 20% coverage. This will be achieved by covering 8 Slovak regional cities. B Four wishes to achieve the full coverage – i.e., 95% of the Slovak population – within 24 months. Its objective is to establish a full-valued mobile operator being able from technological aspect to compete with the present two Slovak mobile operators and at the same time offer significantly lower call prices and other telecommunications services.
The consortium specified direct distribution channels as one of methods of significant decreasing in expenses. “There is no point to build an expensive dealer network for the third mobile operator. We wish to make a maximum use of direct selling channels via the Internet and call centers” the Board Chairman of Radiokomunikace, a.s. commented on the intentions of B Four. Alike in the Czech Republic, the entry of the third mobile operator will bring a massive development to the entire direct-marketing branch, on which the entire Slovak market will subsequently capitalize.
“From the very beginning, we will strive for a close cooperation with the other mobile operators in those areas, where it makes sense despite of a critical competitive fight,” Marek Ondrejka continued. From among these areas he mentioned a domestic roaming, i.e., a free transition to any network that has a coverage in the given location. “Our bid, however, does not require a regulation intervention from the Telecommunications Office in favor of the domestic roaming, which is another advantage of our bid. We believe that we will achieve the same by way of negotiations with the existing operators.”
An example of other attractive services might be, for instance, DVB-H, i.e., digital television broadcasting for mobile phones. “Radiokomunikace is intensively testing this system in the Czech Republic and it wishes to become a contractor of those services for all three mobile operators,” Ing. Miroslav Čuřín illustrated the efficient cooperation of the competitive operators in the CR.
České Radiokomunikace has an extensive experience in mobile telecommunications. Since 1994, it has been technically supplying the operation of the paging service Multitone. It has also been participating in implementation of a network infrastructure for all three mobile operators in the Czech Republic (Telefonica O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone) and it has been providing for connectivity to the mobile operators T-Mobile and Vodafone. In the Czech Republic, ČRa established and it has been operating the following four wireless communication networks for terminal customers:
- Bluetone Angel – unique wireless ADSL in 3.5 GHz band, coverage up to 30 km, without a necessity of direct visibility
- Bluetone Premium Sky – free non-licensed 5.4 GHz band
- The cheapest professional WiFi network in the CR
- High-capacity fix-wireless connections in 3.5 GHz band
It is also a significant shareholder of T-Mobile Czech Republic.
For further information, please contact:
Mr. Pavel Kočiš, Madison PA – Media Representative of B Four, a.s.,
tel.: +420 251 091 222, mobile: +420 602 256 539, e-mail: kocis@madisonpa.cz