After completing ambitious network rollout plan for 2018 and closing the year with 7,003 base stations, PLAY targets further increase in its coverage by additional 2,500 sites in three years. Such development will secure PLAY’s independence from national roaming starting from the beginning of 2022.
PLAY built 1,316 sites in 2018, 563 of which in 4Q alone, improving population coverage of own LTE network to 96.7% from 93% at the end of 2017. “Never in my career have I seen such rapid rollout of a mobile network. Service quality is of key importance to an operator focused on the mobile segment. This is why rollout is our priority.” Jean Marc Harion, the CEO of P4, said during a press conference.
In 2018 total data transferred thorough PLAY network grew by 34% year-on-year to 847 PB. The network supports such development with more than 70% of sites connected to backbone network with transmission links of at least 1 Gb/s, while on average one site operates more than six systems at the available frequencies. And this is clearly reflected in improving ISP ratings, e.g. no. 1 among mobile operators in the latest Speedtest.pl and ranked by Netflix as providing the best streaming experience in Poland.
PLAY will press on with the network expansion in order to secure the highest service quality, but also independence from national roaming starting from 2022. Michał Ziółkowski, CTO of P4, said: “Our plan is to deploy 2,500 new base stations over three years. Already by the end of this year we intend to terminate cooperation with one of roaming partners and put an end to being the operator with the lowest number of base stations.”