Policy factors affecting broadband development in Poland

Poland joined the EU in 2004 and still has one of the Europe’s least developed information societies. Broadband penetration in Poland is still amongst the lowest in the EU and significantly below the EU average.

Considering the present state of information technology, the key challenge for Poland is to reduce the gap between Poland and other EU Member Countries in the area of the development and implementation of information and communication technologies. However, Poland’s accession to the European Union and the implementation of EU regulation mechanisms accelerate the integration of Poland’s telecommunications market with the European market. The market reflects all the global trends, a gradually growing significance of mobile telecommunications services, broadband Internet access, construction of offers directed towards clients’ needs, and a strong trend towards market consolidation, which will gradually change the previous balance of power.

The specific problem of the Polish market is its very poor infrastructure development and the lack of competitors on the fixed market. This translates into limited access to services for end users particularly in the rural areas. A much lower level of telecommunications network development in Poland than other countries in the European Union is the reason that the circumstances and also the effects of the implementation of some solutions of the EU regulation model are different in Poland than in the most developed EU countries.

The aim of the paper is to examine and discuss broadband access development in Poland and the policy factors influencing this development as well as to examine national strategies used to stimulate service and infrastructure competition in Poland. There are, indeed, many other factors affecting broadband development such as the income level/distribution in the country and the infrastructural point of departure. The paper, therefore, analyses the implications of the policy initiatives in light of these basic conditions and the broader context of factors influencing broadband development.

In the paper, different kinds of policy initiatives are examined – with the ‘lightest’forms of intervention first and the ‘strongest’at the end. Furthermore, empirical evidence on the developments in access technologies and the policy initiatives taken by the Polish government are presented. Finally, there is a conclusion regarding the importance of the different types of public policy initiatives for broadband take-up in Poland.