Anna Strezynska, president of the office of electronic Communications, Poland

A lawyer by trade, specialising in Polish and European telecommunications and media law, Anna Strezynska was appointed president of the Polish communications regulatory body in May 2006.

From 1995 to 1997 she was deputy director of Department in the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection, after which she left for a spell working as sa private lawyer. From 1998 to 2001 she was an advisor to three successive Ministers of Communications and from 2000 to 2001 a Director of Department in the Ministry of Communications.

Strezynska says that regulating the Polish mobile market involves “maintaining a fragile balance between incumbents who have been active in this market for almost 15 years and new entrants who entered the market four years ago. This task is not easy in a market with low demand. It is necessary to use different tools in order to support new entrants—even tools that are not particularly welcomed by the European Commission— because barriers to market entry are strong.”

The contribution of incumbents to the development of the Polish mobile sector is insufficient, Strezynska says. “The incumbents are not mature enough to enter into an agreement with the regulator aimed at developing infrastructure and new services. The role of the regulator is to create an environment in which alternative service providers may emerge and exert pressure on weak operators, both incumbents and poorly designed new entrants,” she says.