Preamble – Poland, a major beneficiary of EU membership, is booming
With a nominal GDP of $467.350
billion in 2016 and a population of around 38 million, Poland is the EUs sixth
largest and the world’s 25th largest economy. According to the latest IMF
forecast Poland’s GDP, after an increase of 3.1% in 2016, will grow 3.4% in
2017 more than twice the EU’s predicated growth of 1.4% and almost exactly the
same as the global growth rate for those two years. By comparison with the rest
of Europe Poland, whose GDP per capita is only about 70% of the EU average, is
booming, assisted both by net transfers from the EU budget of about Euro 12
billion per annum and also by substantial remittances worth, according to the
World Bank, $7.2 billion in 2015 from an excess labour force working in richer European countries, including
notably 2 million citizens of Polish descent living in Germany (many historical
remnants of boundary shifts) and about 800,000 working in the UK. The country
has a liberalised and diversified economy including a strong net-exporting
agricultural sector of about two million farms, which also supports a strong
food-manufacturing sector. Poland currently has a female Prime Minister, 53
year old Beata Maria Szydło, vice-chairman of Poland’s Law and Justice Party,
and is the leading member of the Visegrad Group of central European countries,
working on common interests and that also includes Hungary, the Czech Republic
and Slovakia.
Although Poland joined the EU in
2004 and is nominally committed to joining the Euro currency group, it has not
done so yet and has no specific target date for that accession. Of the four
Visegrad countries only Slovakia uses the Euro.
Overview of Poland’s telecoms
market structure
Poland’s main regulator of the
communications and postal sector is UKE (Urząd Komunikacji Elektronicznej, or
Office of Electronic Communications), and this agency publishes an annual
review of the industry which is typically available at the end of June the
following year, hence the 2016 numbers will not be published until June/July
2017. However, the Polish market is relatively mature and the following data
for the year 2015 published June 2016 allow reasonable estimates for 2016 and
2017, providing major regulatory decisions and other important changes in the
marketplace are factored in.
Broadbrush overview of size and
structure of communications sector in 2015
Total Polish telecoms market value in 2015 of $10.5bn
The total size of the sector was
estimated by UKE at PLN 39.5 billion ($10.477 billion) in 2015, or about 2.24%
of GDP, which is rather low compared to OND’s typical estimated range of
2.5%-3.5% for most countries (many factors can affect this ratio, including the
state of the technology cycle in mobile communications and a fast secular
decline in costs for equivalent communications services due to technical
maturity and strong level of competition compared typically to an increase in
costs in the general economy). The UKE report noted that this was the first
growth in revenue in the whole sector in the last couple of years. The Polish
communications sector can be described as strongly regulated, quite liberalised
and competitive, but extremely fragmented compared to most European countries.
In part this may be due to the fact that the regulator has often intervened to
oppose consolidation.
14 million Internet users in 2015
Internet penetration percentage per
person over the last six half years 2013 to 2015 was as follows: 27.3%, 29.4%,
30.2%, 31.6%, 34.4% and 35.7%, with penetration per household of: 77.7%, 83.6%,
86.1%, 90.0%, 98.0% and 101.6%. In 2015, there were in total 14 million
Internet users in Poland – 7.1 million fixed-line and 6.67 million mobile. For
mobile access significant growth of 0.9 million in the number of users was
observed compared to 2014.
The largest market share, amounting
to 30% in terms of the number of users in 2015, was reported by Orange.
This is due to the fact that the company provides its services both in the
fixed-line and mobile networks. Polkomtel was second with a 9.2% share.
Mobile services penetration in terms of subscribers down in
2015
The penetration of mobile services
in 2015 shrank by 3 percentage points compared to 2014 and amounted to 147.2%.
The operators had 56.6 million active SIM cards in their databases and the
decline was caused by adjusting subscriber databases to the reality by the telecommunications
undertakings. In 2015, the revenue from mobile telephony accounted for 43.7% of
the total market value and totalled approximately PLN 17.2 billion.
Mobile operators in order of
importance include: PTK Centertel/Orange, Polkomtel/Plus GSM, T-Mobile Poland,
CenterNet, Mobyland, plus a number of MVNOs, including P4/Play and Mobile
Vikings.
According to UKE, the market leader
in 2015 in the Polish mobile market was Orange Polska with a market share of
27.7%, followed by P4 with 25.8%, then Polkomtel with 22.6% and T-Mobile Polska
with 20.8%, leaving about 3.1% for other operators.
Fixed line market value declining for 5 years
The value of fixed line telephony
in Poland declined steadily from PLN 5.2 billion in 2011 to PLN 3.3 billion, i.e.
down 12.8% in 2012, down 13.5% in 2013, down 4.8% in 2014 and down 12.7% to PLN
3.3 billion in 2015. The 2015 value was just 8.35% of the total
telecommunications market value, with 5.7 million fixed line connections, split
by type of access as follows: POTS – 57%; ISDN – 13.0%; WLR – 14.0%; CATV – 14.1%;
and xDSL – 1.9%.
Fixed operators include Orange
Polska, Netia, Telefonia Dialog, Telekomunikacja Kolejowa (TK Telekom), T-Mobile
Poland and Exatel.
Other markets
Cable TV operators include, in
order of importance, UPC Poland, Vectra, Multimedia Polska, Toya and Inea,
which serve around 75% of the country’s 4.6 million CATV subscribers, with
another 400 operators serving the remaining 20%. According to the Polish
Chamber for Electronic Communication (PIKE, or Polska Izba Komunikacji
Elektronicznej), a trade association that represents about 110 companies
including broadband electronic communications operators and the associated
manufacturers and distributors of equipment and services, its members serve
about 75% of the Polish cable TV market, which makes up about 37% of a total
digital TV market of over 12.145 million.
Poland has one of the lowest levels
of FTTH penetrations in Europe, with only 140,000 users in 2014 and 170,000 in
2015. This is also, according to UKE, a very fragmented market with the top
three service providers in 2015 – Inea, Telefon Dialog and Orange Polska – collectively
serving less than 25% of the user base.
Update on the telecommunications market in Poland, the EU’s sixth largest economy – Part 1
Update on the telecommunications market in Poland, the EU’s sixth largest economy – Part 2
Update on the telecommunications market in Poland, the EU’s sixth largest economy – Part 3
