Polkomtel launches LTE; 22% of population covered at launch

Poland’s largest operator by subscribers, Polkomtel, which operates under the moniker Plus, has announced the launch of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services. The cellco’s new platform boasts maximum theoretical speeds of 100Mbps downstream and 50Mbps upstream. Polkomtel’s LTE network covers approximately 22% of the population, and is available in 16 major cities including Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw and Lodz and more than a dozen smaller towns. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Polkomtel had signed up an estimated 2.85 million of its 15.1 million customers to its 3G services at the end of September 2011, placing it second in the data service market behind Orange Poland, which claimed 7.87 million 3G customers at the same date.