In yesterday’s column about the telecoms protest, I shared my opinion on one of the topics raised in the protest. Today we will deal with another part of it, more significant for the entire market.
The National Chamber of Ethernet Communications (KIKE), the Cable Television Association and the Association of Electronic Media and Telecommunications Employers (Mediakom), i.e. bodies representing telecommunications companies in Poland, thundered in their letter to the Prime Minister about the destruction of thousands of micro, small, medium and family telecommunications entrepreneurs.
Krzysztof Kacprowicz, President of the Association of Electronic Media Employers Mediakom:
We, thousands of micro, small, medium and family telecommunications entrepreneurs, who daily build the strength of Polish telecommunications, have exhausted our possibilities and want to speak out publicly on an issue that is important to us and to Poland. The Electronic Communications Law passed by the Sejm last Friday, as a result of excessive and unjustified regulation, may devastate the competitiveness of the telecommunications market in Poland and lead to the collapse of many SME sector enterprises.
In another fragment of the letter to the Prime Minister, we can read about the full consent of the entire market – small, medium and large telecommunications companies:
The voice of Polish entrepreneurs, who are the salt of the Polish earth, has been disregarded. If 100% of entrepreneurs – from micro, through small, medium and large Polish enterprises, of which there are several hundred, to large international corporations – unanimously request that corrections be made to the law being processed, which are not in the slightest contradiction with the implemented European Union directives, can these entrepreneurs be wrong?
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So let’s take a look at the latest UKE report on the state of the telecommunications market in Poland in 2023 and see what has already happened to these micro, small and medium-sized Polish telecommunications enterprises.
In 2022, telecommunications companies that had a share of less than 1% in terms of users served more than half of landline internet customers in Poland! What do we have today? It’s only 35%, and this is not current data. I suspect that in the 2024 report, at this rate year over year, it will be only about 20%.
Why? In some descriptions of the UKE report, you can read that this percentage reshuffle resulted from the takeover of UPC by Play. Well, here there was only a change in the entity table – UPC disappeared, Play appeared.
We have all forgotten that in recent years the majority of Polish telecommunications companies have been taken over by large international corporations, i.e. the last position in the list of organizations associating telecoms.
This year, Play acquired the Silesian company Miconet from Mikołów (Multimetro), and previously such companies as SferaNet, Syrion and Fibreo (source: CRN). Another international concern, Orange, took over six local operators in three years, most recently GigaNET and Podlaskie Sieci Światłowodowe (source: TELKO.in).
And this is not the last word of these operators, as you can see from the chart Play is chasing Orange, which is why it is taking over local operators. Orange is taking over so as not to lose the distance, having experience from the French market, where the owner of Play – Grupa iliad is the largest fiber optic operator in France.
So, will legal regulations devastate the competitiveness of the telco market in Poland and lead to the collapse of many SME sector companies? I don’t think so, they are simply being taken over by large corporations. As a result, the market for stationary services, not only the Internet, but also access to television or stationary telephony, may over time divide like the market for mobile services.
Let’s look at the decline in the share of local companies in landline telephony services:
Access to television:
And participation in bundled services:
What does this mean for us, the customers? Well, nothing good, because the principle that the bigger can do more does not apply here, as was the case in one of the local cases in Starachowice.
Stock Image from Depositphotos.
Source: antyweb.pl
