Emitel, the leading Polish integrator of high-rise broadcasting infrastructure, believes that drones will become a regular part of the scenery over our heads in the close future and will be utilized to carry out various commercial tasks.
Therefore, for nearly a year, the company has been active in the preparation of a nationwide network infrastructure that allows for safe and consistent integration of "unmanned" (drone) flights with another aircraft (e.g. aircraft).
Drone Labs Project
Emitel's Drone Labs task focuses on checking different scenarios for commercial usage of drones (e.g. cargo transport in the courier industry). The company besides does not close to working with partners; private entities (e.g. start-ups of technology) and public (such as chambers and aviation agencies). What function does the telecom company want to play on the drone market? Why does Emitel want to become the first Polish company with a prestigious LUC aviation certificate? How does the war in Ukraine affect the improvement of the unmanned aircraft industry?
These and another questions were discussed in an interview with ed. Sławomir Kosielinski from Think-tank Institute of Micromacro managers Emitel liable for the Drone Labs project: Jarosław Niemcielski, manager of the Bureau of Regulatory and improvement of External Relations, Petra Pawlucka, manager of the Office of strategy and task Management and Wojciech Szczęsny, marketing coordinator.
Sławomir Kosieliński: I have been observing Emitel for respective years since you conducted a very successful terrestrial tv digitisation project. amazingly for me, you are now turning into a “sharp” drone market. For the sake of clarity, this is usually referred to as EU accession negotiations, but besides as pioneering, breaking down technological, legal and social barriers. Why do you request drones?
Jarosław Niebielski: Main area Emitel SA there are radio-television broadcasting services and access to the altitude infrastructure we have. We supply services to very different customers – from public to commercial, mainly in radio technologies, although of course we besides usage fibre infrastructure for this purpose. The services provided by Emitel are built on network solutions with individually determined levels of reliability. We can boast nationwide networks with the highest level of service (SLA) available on the national market. Moreover, the full production of the service, i.e. its design, construction and maintenance, is carried out by our company. We do not usage another entities. Network infrastructure elements are usually redundant in the area of power supply and teletransmission. We besides have mobile tallness objects. due to the fact that we have critical infrastructure elements, the quality of providing services is highly crucial to us.
Wojciech Szczęsny: We are curious in utilizing our infrastructure – this is where we start. We do not want to immediately decide where precisely the drone marketplace will be, but we always gotta start somewhere. We gotta say to ourselves that we start from a advanced level due to the fact that as a network company we have laboratories where we test solutions based on fresh technologies. We have 2 Smart City laboratories and we could theoretically test solutions in them dedicated to the drone manufacture "dry", but we decided to put labs for "manners" in a real space where you can fly.
...you build a demonstrators in the south of Poland?
Wojciech Lucky: Exactly. We want to know the product needs of possible customers in this market. We do this by plan reasoning – we imagine that the client comes to us and we ask about his needs.
Let's go this way. There's a drone company coming in to win a bidding to monitor any area... and then what?
Jarosław Niecielski: For present we can offer a drone detection service. This is 1 of the essential elements of the mission safety in the air. To this end we built in the south of the country Emitel Drone Lab, whose aim is, inter alia, to build the competence of the company in this area. Following available technological solutions, we are convinced that the dedicated flight monitoring network will be an essential part of the service platform of the built drone technology market. In this direction, he goes. PAŻP (Polish Air Navigation Agency)which already has specified solutions in any areas of the country.
That sounds convincing due to the fact that you have 1 big, private computer network.
Jarosław Niecielski: We can say that we are able to build a private network or dedicated with very circumstantial parameters full scalable from the area of the municipality to the full country. However, it is always a network that has to respond to client needs. We believe that our experience and the way our networks are built predestinates us to deal with services with a very advanced level of security.
Let's go to strategical level. How can these Polish experiences be transferred to the European market? Which countries could we start in?
Petra Pawłucka: I must stress that as a company we do not declare a business expansion plan outside Poland. But know-how and experience can be useful. This marketplace is very young and despite the first regulations, it is not implemented in all EU countries to the same extent. What we can replicate for the minute is akin projects that we have implemented in Poland. But our function in this ecosystem is not yet decisive – we are looking at different directions.
Now you request extra contracts. Where to look for customers – among drone companies or critical infrastructure managers?
Wojciech Szczęsny: Infrastructure is something we know and feel good about. We're trying to make the most of it. But in order to supply business-level services (not just r&d), we request to decision forward and become a full-fledged drone operator.
Jarosław Niechocielski: We believe that it would be essential for our company to get a LUC certificate (light UAS operator certificate). Certification would unlock the business possible of the marketplace and at the same time relieve in many cases the administration liable for the industry. We believe that any entrepreneur dealing with unmanned aircraft will do anything to guarantee that the services provided are safe for, so-called, average citizens. Certification would greatly improve and velocity up the cooperation of marketplace operators, which would lead to further commercialisation in the short term.
W Europe's LUC certification is given to companies providing operator services for a circumstantial drone model. But on the another hand, it would be a breakthrough. You could show without undue hold how your network works. Of course, it would be perfect for companies with appropriate EASA certificates to come to you (European Union Aviation Safety Agency)
Wojciech Szczęsny: We supply very precise data that allows to monitor the sky in a given area and plan missions. We add more safety elements. We believe that erstwhile each mission must be certified or issued by ULC in the form of a decision, the marketplace will make very slowly. It is like comparing the improvement of the drone marketplace in Poland and Ukraine during the war.
Jarosław Niebielski: At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, all unmanned aircraft designed and manufactured in Poland were gladly purchased by the army there. The talks we have with home drone manufacturers and another components of unmanned technology show that after 3 years, many of these contracts have expired without a chance of renewal, as now Ukrainian engineers produce much more advanced machinery inside the country. Why? due to the fact that the war and the request to guarantee safety for the state determined the avalanche improvement and removed almost all restrictions from its airspace. I am not of course saying that regulations should not be – these services must have their safety limitations. But we request the courage to take greater work for the improvement of this market... the marketplace itself. Without the mechanisms for unlocking potential, present hampered by rigorous regulation and by the caution of regulators, we will be "developing" at a very advanced rate of turtle. Launching the certification process is an essential step towards marketplace development.
Petra Pawłucka: We do not exclude participation in a cooperation model in which specified a certified operator will be our binary partner and we will warrant a sense of safety resulting from the network's redundancy, which we can supply for its needs. Besides, more certified entities on the marketplace are more business models. There should be a place for everyone.
However, Emitel himself wants to tug behind the tug and stick himself on the forehead of the cape.
Petra Pawłucka: You can wait for individual to show up, but you can try... We don't want to wait. We want to make in different areas and now we do not know precisely where we will end up – due to the fact that we do not close to any possibilities. We start with an altitude network, radio services, detection and safety – this is simply a natural direction for Emitel as an infrastructure company and we feel fantastic about it, but we besides check another areas.
This is simply a very crucial point – you enter the marketplace dominated by startups.
Jarosław Niecielski: We talk about a marketplace rich in start-ups – we do not deprive them of their experience and will to build mature business projects, and we believe that they are an essential component of the fast improvement of the market.
But we have something unique that we want to add to this incredibly vital business environment. We enter the drone marketplace as a company with 50 years of experience, with large operating and investment assets. We have opportunities that are inactive lacking in this industry. We believe that we can add values to the full market, due to the fact that even if our tests with partners do not grow into large business contracts in the short term, there will always be added value (knowledge, experience) that will benefit the full ecosystem in the long term.
What's your advantage?
Wojciech Szczęsny: We have experience in cooperation with regulators due to the fact that we work in strictly regulated markets. We have experience in communication of fresh technologies – we have worked on creating and implementing on a national scale many of them – among another things, we have conducted digitalisation of terrestrial tv in Poland, as you mentioned in the first question. So we have the means, tools and experience that allows us to believe that open social communication around the developing drone manufacture is almost as crucial as technological improvement in this area.
