We reported previously that Lech Wałęsa is said to be a big Skype fan. Niklas went over to Poland to see that for himself. He also met up with several other Polish dignitaries in a panel discussion "Freedom of communication — privilege or necessity?" held in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday, Sept 14, by Skype and our Polish friends at Onet.pl.

Wałęsa, the legendary leader of Solidarity trade union, laureate of Nobel Peace Prize and former President of the Republic of Poland, admitted being an enthusiastic user of Skype and had now the opportunity to share his feedback and views straight with the man who invented the whole thing

Other people participating in the panel were Onet.pl President Łukasz Wejchert, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior and Administration Ludwik Dorn, the Mayor of Warsaw and former Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.

More than 140 journalists and VIP-s were present and the event got pretty big coverage in Polish media (see the links below). The guests talked about the future of Polish and global telecommunication market. Niklas presented the vision of Skype for communications of tomorrow. Lech Wałęsa said that thanks to Skype he may be in touch with thousands of people and that Skype is his preferred way of communicating now, when he has retired. To show everybody how great Skype is, we decided to make a video call to London office on the large screen. This was really a thrilling moment as video sometimes fails but this time it worked perfectly and I had a nice chat with Stella in front of the huge audience.

The President of Office of Electronic Communications Anna Streżyńska, who also attended the discussion, pointed the necessity of further demonopolization of telecommunication market. She concluded that the expansion of new technologies like Skype leads to development of a “healthy” competition, i.e. the one where the customer’s benefit is most important. 

More coverage, some of these also link to video clips:

• onet.pl
• Internet Standard
• gazeta.pl