We have said it before, but the maturity of the DVB-H standard and the supplier market around it, means that countries that have barely raised their heads to mention mobile TV, can bring a fully tested service to market in just a few months.
Poland seems to be the latest central European country to be going down that route, although it has announced that an 11 company trial would start there in early 2008. During 2007 Hungary, Dubai, Russia and Singapore, to name but a few, simply launched DVB-H services after a simple test or no test at all.
Initially Poland had a technical trial, operated by TOP EmiTel, the Polish Broadcaster, but the announcement said that so far the Office of Electronic Communications in Poland has already issued 11 radio licenses for trial transmissions of this type, so perhaps there are a few we haven’t heard of.
The big four mobile operators there will be involved, Centertel, Polkomtel, PTC and P4 as well as the existing DVB-T platform operator Cyfrowy Polsat, part of Polsat.
Although it is being talked of as a trial, our guess is that this is the beginning of a working service in Poland, with the only interesting thing being whether or not it opts for a free to air service or a low price paid service and whether or not handsets will be subsidized. Poland has an 84% handset penetration, with around 32 million mobile customers there, but only 1.7 million pay TV customers, so it is likely that the service needs to at least have some channels as free to air in order to take off.