PIKE Conference, ZAKOPANE. There are already over 30,000 homes in Poland with DTT set-top boxes despite there being no digital terrestrial platform. This surprising figure was provided by Wojciek Halka of the Polish Association of Telecommunication Engineers (SIT), who spoke out in favour of the introduction of DTT services, which are at present only limited to test transmissions in a few parts of the country. A plan for the transition to DTT broadcasting devised in Poland in 2005 envisaged switchover on a region-by-region basis starting in Q1 2006 and completion by 2014. Although the government has since worked on another plan, its details remain unknown. Halka added that a DTT platform could offer between 35-40 channels and target the approximately 6 million homes in Poland that currently receive only terrestrial TV services. Good “selling points” for a service would be coverage of the Beijing Olympics and Euro 2012.
