[Satellite News 04-16-12] TP, the major Polish telco, is making headway with its DTH strategy. The operator’s main shareholder is France Telecom, which has deployed satellite very effectively in France and is now seeing similar success in Poland. At the end of last year, the operator already had more than half a million DTH subscribers in Poland, compared to just 110,000 IPTV subscribers in the country, meaning it had a close to 5:1 split in terms of DTH versus IPTV. Poland, which has a population of close to 40 million people has long been an exciting market for satellite given that a number of DTH operators have emerged in recent times with the likes of TP, ‘N’, Canal+ and Polsat among others have looked to use satellite to monetize the pay-TV market.

    Satellite is now a key component of TP’s strategy of becoming a full service provider in Poland. “In Poland, satellite TV users represent over 60 percent of pay-TV customers, albeit cable has become dominant in Poland’s biggest cities. Nevertheless, in a country that has geographically dispersed population, such as Poland, it is not surprising that satellite platforms have a strong market position and I do not expect that this will be jeopardized,” Dominique Lesage, Director of Content, TP Group, told Satellite News.

    Despite some consolidation last year between the ‘N’ and Canal+ to create a new DTH platform with more than two million subscribers, the market has seen some ferocious competition in terms of satellite TV services. “The pay-TV market in Poland is saturated. Satellite platforms may either concentrate on customer loyalty or trying to attract cable TVs’ customers — but to do this they need to bundle TV with telecommunications services,” says Lesage. “So far, the Polish market has been quite fragmented, this has been changing recently — market players are joining forces in order to attract new customers in a more effective way. Two Polish satellite platforms ‘Cyfra +’ and ‘n’ are merging, so we will have a new, strong market player. Cable TV operators are also consolidating. UPC Polska has recently taken over Aster, another cable TV operator.”

    With a DTH subscriber base of more than 500,000 subscribers, satellite has become a vital component of TP’s overall communications strategy. “Satellite technology is of key importance to us. It allows us to offer TV services on a large, nationwide scale, as the territorial reach of IPTV services is limited,” says Lesage. “However, our key priority is to offer a package of multimedia services and the best content, irrespective of technology.”

    If the operator’s demands for satellite go up, Lesage says, “We do not expect that TP’s demands for the satellite capacity would grow in excess to our capabilities. However, looking at the market — as 3-D and HD TV are becoming more popular — the demand for the satellite capacity will probably grow and this trend may contribute to the increase of the costs that service providers will pay for satellite capacity. In the future the market may even face a shortage of satellite capacity and this is one of the reasons why IPTV, delivered on the back of a fixed broadband connection, will play an increasingly important role in this market.”

The operator aims to become a major full service provider in Poland, but there are hurdles to overcome. “There are two important challenges for TP. Firstly, we want to deliver a complete offer: so triple play and quadruple play, based on bundles of TV and telecommunications services, which is our core business. The second challenge is developing our ‘content everywhere’ offer. We want to offer our clients the best multimedia content on all screens — TV, computer and mobile. The TP Group has the potential and resources to do this. We already deliver content to various devices — not only TV sets, but also PCs and smartphones. We are now working to make the content offer for different devices more homogenous,” adds Lesage.