The Polish regulator has walked slap-bang into the same mobile TV trap which tripped up, and threatens to continue to trip up, most would be European mobile TV operations.
It has awarded its DVB-H license to a transmission company for just over €3 million ($3.8 million). Info-TV-FM builds telecommunication masts and towers for TV broadcasters and for mobile operators and has won the contract to install DVB-H services in 31 towns and cities in a license which lasts to 2015 and then it must build a national network which will run through 2023.
Now it remains to be seen whether Info-TV-FM can reach commercial terms with the major cellular operators there, which all have a history of throwing their toys out of the pram when they are rejected in this kind of bidding situation.
It leaves us none the wiser to know that the leading mobile operators there all bid for the license collectively and did not get it, they are are Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, Polkomtel and PKT Centertel, but when you realize that Orange owns Centertel, T-Mobile owns Polska and Vodafone has a 24 stake in Polkomtel, which it wishes to increase, you immediately get a fuller picture of the attitudes of the protagonists.
In Germany it was Vodafone and T-Mobile which decided to launch DVB-T devices to confuse the market and scupper the Mobile 3.0 license which it also bid for and lost. Vodafone has also launched DVB-H services in both Italy, where it has done very badly, so badly that it refuses to say how many customers it has signed, and also in Austria, where also Vodafone says the business model does not work. In France Orange has delayed the launch of French DVB-H for almost three years due to disagreements with broadcasters over who pays for the network build out and the eventual business model.
Unless these particular leopards change their spots overnight, Poland will hit the same trouble. In a market where most people cannot afford pay TV, and where operators mostly do not offer subsidized devices and where operators are unlikely to make promises about shipping DVB-H devices. This will potentially leave Info-TV-FM trying to do what no broadcaster before it has managed, sell a mobile TV service without the help of the cellular operators. Good luck.