It is with good reason that the Polish Office of Electronic Communications (PIKE) annual international conference and exhibition is regarded as one of the TV industry’s most important events in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Though held in the remote mountain resort town of Zakopane, hundreds of kilometres from Warsaw, it always attracts leading executives from most if not all the key players, with many willing to discuss their company’s strategy in public.
This year was no exception, with Polsat (in the shape of its owner, Zygmunt Solorz-Zak), the incumbent telco TPSA, leading MSOs UPC, Vectra and Aster and regulatory bodies UKE and KRRiT all making an appearance.
The conference took Digital transfer of mass media – its social, legal and technological aspects as its theme and did indeed cover digitalisation from all angles. However, it still left many questioned unanswered, and raised a few new interesting ones along the way.
One issue that certainly raised a few eyebrows was the likely effect that Poland’s forthcoming DTT platform, when it does eventually make its debut, will have on the cable industry. PIKE president Jerzy Straszewski’s view that operators could lose up to a third of their 4.5 million-subscriber base, who currently receive only lifeline services, was certainly a wake-up call.
While he added that the solution was to move these subscribers up to more comprehensive packages, and at the same time target a further 1.5 million homes passed by, but not connected to, cable networks, achieving this in practice will surely be no easy matter.
Zygmunt Solorz-Zak meanwhile insisted that Polsat was not holding up the digitalisation process. However, there is clearly a problem, given that both Polsat and TVN, the other national commercial broadcaster, have analogue licences until 2014 and the UKE would like to see ASO take place in 2012.
In an interesting development since the PIKE conference, it has been reported that Polsat and TVN have agreed for ASO to take place in 2012 providing 95% of TV homes then have digital receivers. The UKE has nevertheless dismissed their proposal as unrealistic.
While the conference only touched briefly on possible consolidation in the DTH sector, there is growing talk about a possible deal, with Cyfrowy Polsat even confirming its interest in acquiring Cyfra+ yesterday (October 16).
It was also revealed that the recently launched pre-paid DTH service TNK, which is operated by ITI Group, is using the UK’s Freesat as its model. Though no official figures for TNK’s take-up have yet been released, it is known to be doing well and could well emulate or even exceed Freesat’s 100,000 in the first five months of operation.
The Polish market is clearly changing, and come PIKE 2009 is likely to look very different than it does today.
A full review of the PIKE conference will appear in the next issue of New Television Insider. For further details, please go to: http://www.newtelevisioninsider.com
