Poland’s top phone operator renames fixed network Orange

Poland’s top phone operator Telekomunikacja Polska (TP) said Monday it had renamed its fixed network Orange within rebranding, after placing the name on its mobile network in 2005.

“This is the second phase of the group’s rebranding,” said Wojciech Jabczynski, spokesman for TP in which France Telecom/Orange is the largest shareholder with 47.5 percent.

Poland, a country of 38 million people, is one of the key European markets for France Telecom/Orange, along with France, Spain and Britain.

The TP group is Poland’s biggest phone operator with 14.7 million active SIM cards and 5.6 million fixed lines at the end of 2011.

TP’s fixed-line client numbers have been falling for several years, shedding 11.4 percent on an annual basis in 2011, with fixed-line revenues dropping by 6.6 percent in that year following an 8.5-percent fall the year before.

In Poland, which had 50.7 million active SIM cards at the end of 2011, Orange is the mobile market leader ahead of T-Mobile of the Deutsche Telekom group with 14.2 million SIM cards and the Plus brand of the Polkomtel group with 14 million cards, according to data from the Telepolis agency.