UPC customer boom anticipates internet service
The Polish unit of broadband provider United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC) has high hopes that its clients will latch onto its internet service, slated to start later this year, a UPC Polska official said last Tuesday. UPC credited a growing number of satellite TV owners for its 28% hike in digital pay-TV subscribers.
Bruce Massey, the managing director of UPC Polska, which owns Polish cable operator Polska Telewizja Kablowa (PTK), said that as of June, PTK's Wizja TV reached 378,000 digital subscribers with its direct-to-home (DHT) satellite service and more than 720,000 cable customers in the Polish pay-TV market. He also said the number of the company's DHT subscribers skyrocketed 268% in the past 12 months. UPC Polska's closest competitor, Cyfra+, the Polish digital pay-TV arm of French cable operator Canal+, had 293,403 cable subscribers as of June, he said.
Last year, UPC acquired @Entertainment, a provider of pay-TV service and owner of PTK, the largest cable TV network in Poland. PTK is now wired to almost 1.8 million homes. PTK operates Wizja TV, the digital television platform offered via cable and satellite that reached more then 1.1 million homes as of June 30, and pushed the company to the forefront of cable operators in the country.
After waiting more than a year, PTK received a national data transmission license from the government on June 28, enabling the company to offer internet access service through Wizja TV's digital platform.
UPC plans to offer Wizja TV subscribers internet access via satellite in October. The company plans to start offering internet service through PTK's cable television network in December, and hopes to have 175,000 homes ready to go online by the end of the year, Massey said.
Massey said the rollout would occur slowly "to make sure we've done the proper marketing and testing and (that we) have the consumer acceptance before we launch all over Poland." UPC Polska will invest $8 million-$10 million this year in upgrading its network, and a total of $80 million during the next five to six years.
"Ultimately, our objective is to provide these services to about 80% of all the cable customers we have in Poland," Massey said.
UPC Polska has been modifying and upgrading its networks in Warsaw and Krakow, the first two cities where internet access will be offered under the brand name Chello, UPC's pan-European broadband subsidiary. In 2001, the company will roll out service to other areas, including Gdansk, Katowice and Lublin, although the exact city order has not been determined yet.
Massey could not predict how fast the broadband continuous high-speed internet access service would be until testing was completed. But he said the download time would be quicker than the typical 128 kilobytes per second speed of Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN), or fast digital phone lines.
After Poland's telecom market is liberalized in 2003, UPC plans to offer voice telephony as the "third leg" in its so-called "triple play" of video, voice and data services, Massey said.
Massey also said the company was in the process of changing the names of @Entertainment to UPC Polska and Polska Telewizja Kablowa to UPC Telewizja Kablowa. The Wizja TV name will remain the same but with an added strap line reading "UPC Direct," he said.
