Polish entrepreneurs riding IPTV revolution

A few years ago Marek Kiełczewski and Jan Rychter graduated from the Warsaw Polytechnic School and set up an IT company called Sentivision together with Yoichi Akase, a Japanese businessman. Their skills caught Sony's eye and it became one of Sentivision's clients; last year Sony bought 40% of the company's shares for USD 4 million. Sentivision has recently set up a production plant in China and last year the company posted revenue of USD 10 million. The firm's main products are Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) decoders, which allow users to watch TV through the internet, download films and watch them on request. IPTV is only getting started in Poland - last month TP SA began to offer Videostrada, which covers about 800,000 inhabitants of Warsaw and broadcasts a dozen or so channels. Netia, Dialog and film distributor Monolith Films, together with Warsaw-based IT company ATM, are working on similar projects. Sentivision has a serious competitor - ADB Polska, whose design unit is based in Zielona Góra and employs 200 people (5 times more than Sentivision). ADB Polska has also got plants abroad. (Gazeta Wyborcza, pp.1, 23) J.L.