â?śIn signing the deal with the Czech Basketball Federation we not only link our name to another popular sport, but we make it clear that we intend to support Czech sports in the long-term,â?ť said Ing. Gustav Hraška, RadioMobilâ??s director of finance and also one of the best basketball players to play for the Czechoslovak National Team in the 1970s and 80s.
RadioMobil will become a partner to both the menâ??s and womenâ??s senior national teams for the duration of 1999 and possibly beyond. â?śWe hope that connecting a young, successful company with a dynamic sport will help both parties climb to a higher level,â?ť said Ing. Miloš Pražák, the chairman of the Czech Basketball Federation. â?śCzech national teams have had successful years so far, with the women set to compete in the final of the European Championships wearing the Paegas logo on their uniforms and the men needing only a semifinal victory to reach the final game of the European Championships,â?ť Pražák added.
â?śSince its very inception our company has sponsored a number of sporting events and teams,â?ť said RadioMobil press spokeswoman Tereza Kakosová. â?śBasketball is a sport with a long tradition which has recently been growing more and more popular with the general public. RadioMobil hopes to take part in making the game even more popular,â?ť she added.
The RadioMobil joint-stock company is the operator of the GSM network called Paegas. Its largest shareholders are ÄŚeské radiokomunikace a.s., with 51 percent, and the international consortium CMobil, which holds a 49 percent share. CMobil is made up of the German operator T-Mobil, the Italian operator TIM, PVT, TelekomunikaÄŤní montáže Praha and SpoĹ?itelní kapitálová spoleÄŤnost.
The Paegas GSM network today covers more than 96 percent of the population of the Czech Republic. Customers can now take their Paegas mobile phones to 61 countries around the world and utilize the roaming services of 113 operators. As of January 1999, more than 400,000 customers were using the services of the Paegas GSM network.