Many Poles Find That Dialing T Means Trouble With Antiquated Phone System

Poland has many crushing problems: burgeoning foreign debt, political dissension, inadequate social services. But the one that may rankle Poles the most is the telephone system.

There aren’t enough telephones to go around, and people who do have them find that even if the phones themselves work, the system doesn’t.

One man said he dialed his office in Warsaw three times in succession and each time reached a different number.

At a community newspaper, a reporter picked up the office’s only phone and got a dial tone. “You are looking at a miracle,” he said, holding up the receiver. “It works.”

A Westerner living in Warsaw said her phone stopped working when workers started digging in her neighborhood; she was told she would have to wait a month to have service restored.

But the biggest obstacle is trying to get a telephone in the first place.

More than 2 million applications for telephones are pending in Poland and the list is growing faster than phones are being made and installed. The average waiting period is 13 years, but some have been waiting 20 years or more.

“Like other areas of our economy, the situation is not satisfactory at the moment,” said Roman Gebka, director of the telecommunications service for the state telephone and telegraph company.

“The basic problems now are a lack of equipment, a lack of cables . . . and a lack of work force.”

Poland has just 2.6 million telephone subscribers in its population of 37.5 million--about 7 subscribers for each 100 people. Subtract phones in offices and other public places, and that comes to just 1.8 million private phone customers.

Altogether Poland has 11 actual telephone sets for every 100 people; the United States has 79, Sweden 85, and Great Britain has 51.

In the countryside, the problem is particularly acute. For 14.8 million Poles in rural areas there are just 285,000 telephone subscriptions. And about 7,000 villages have no phones at all.

But even people lucky enough to get phones have problems--broken connections, buzzing or rattling noises on the line, mysterious misdirection of calls.

Not having a telephones is a fact of life in Ursynow, a sprawling planned community of apartment blocks on the outskirts of Warsaw. For its 135,000 people, it has 4,000 private telephones and 102 pay phones that often don’t work.

Many Poles do their telephoning while on the job, using the company phones. They also can try one of the nation’s 85,000 pay phones--some of which work.

Hotel operators, restaurateurs and even private householders are usually willing to let others use their phones, sometimes for a small charge.

Gebka of the telecommunications service said the ideal would be 20 million telephones in Poland by the year 2000. But he added that, short of a miracle, Poland would not come near that goal. Currently, Poland can install only about 150,000 phones a year.

“Polish industry is as it is,” he said. “It produces as much as we are able to in this country. Everything that the industry produces is being installed. There are no reserves.”

To step up production, he said, Poland needs new factories and additional telephone exchange stations. Construction of those will take years, he said.

He also blamed part of the equipment shortage on the U.S.-led trade embargo that bans high-technology sales to the East Bloc. Poland’s international calling capabilities are particularly hampered by the embargo, he said.

Besides lacking the most sophisticated equipment, said an engineer at the Warsaw telephone exchange, the state-run telephone system has difficulty attracting qualified technicians because the starting pay is just 26,000 zlotys ($69) a month.

A government report in February said more than 60% of the urban telephone systems are outdated and need modernization.