T-Mobile Poland has confirmed that it intends to bring forward its planned 3G shutdown date, from end-2023 to April. In an interview with Telko.in, the operator’s CEO Andreas Maierhofer said: ‘We communicated the plan to turn off 3G by the end of 2023, but the experience with refarming so far, including customer feedback, has prompted us to accelerate this process. We plan to complete the shutdown of 3G nationwide in April.’
The executive also confirmed that the telco has no plans to sell off its passive tower infrastructure or build out its own fixed fibre access network. On the subject of fixed last-mile access, Maierhofer stated that T-Mobile owns 27,000km of fibre backbone infrastructure but is content to offer fixed broadband services on rivals’ networks via wholesale agreements.
He said: ‘T-Mobile builds its own network for B2B services and relies on wholesale access when it comes to the B2C market. Let’s also not forget about the new 5G networks, which in the future, using efficient subscriber equipment, will enable access to homes and provide a full range of telecommunications services in areas where no one will ever try to lay optical fibre. This is also an opportunity for us.’