WASHINGTON, D.C.-The commercial trunked radio industry in the Czech Republic is showing significant signs of growth and is on pace to reach more than 22,000 subscribers by 2000, according to the International Mobile Telecommunications Association.
Mobilkom, a joint venture between Motorola Inc. (49 percent) and Connectel (51 percent), is the country’s largest operator in terms of number of subscribers and systems in operation, and also is the only company providing nationwide service, said IMTA. All other operators have fewer than 1,300 subscribers. IMTA estimates that 51 percent of the country’s customers are in Prague, the capital city, and that 16 of the 24 licensees actually operate systems.
On average, operators there typically have realized growth rates of 70 percent to 80 percent during their first few years of operation in the market, which began to see competition in 1993.
IMTA expects the market to grow annually by approximately 30 percent from 1997 to 2000.
Czech operators don’t attribute many service cancellations to competition from other operators, but rather to customers going out of business, said IMTA.
A majority of the customers in the country come from power and heating plants (25 percent), the civil engineering sector (24 percent) and the services industry (20 percent). The industries that use trunking services the least are the construction and trade industries.
