For months, I’ve been deep-diving into the offers of major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Poland. As someone who relies on a stable, high-performance connection for both work and personal projects, I expected to find a competitive market eager to serve the tens of thousands of IT professionals who have recently made Poland their home.
Instead, I found a market defined by rigid, “glue-the-client” tactics and a bizarre resistance to modern technical needs.
The “Golden Handcuffs” of 24-Month Contracts
In Poland, the 24-month contract is still the undisputed king. While long-term commitments are standard globally, the terms surrounding them here feel predatory.
The biggest issue arises when you move. If you relocate to a new apartment, you essentially have two “choices”:
Transfer the service to the new address (if they have coverage).
Continue paying for a service they cannot provide if the new building lacks their fiber infrastructure.
It is absurd that a provider’s inability to deliver a service — due to their own lack of infrastructure — becomes a financial obligation for the customer. Instead of winning loyalty through quality support and high uptime, ISPs are choosing to trap users in legal fine print.
The Myth of the “Business-Only” Static IP
Perhaps the most frustrating discovery was the industry’s stance on Static IP addresses. For years, I’ve been told by sales representatives that static IPs are reserved strictly for business entities.
This is often backed by a vague, outdated claim that EU regulations or “privacy laws” restrict static IPs for private individuals. This is objectively false. Since the landmark rulings around GDPR, an IP address is indeed considered “personal data,” but this classification creates obligations for data protection, not a prohibition on the service itself.
By refusing static IPs to private individuals, ISPs are actively alienating their most valuable customers: IT Professionals.
The Profile of a “Best Customer”:
Who they are: Developers, DevOps engineers, and AI researchers.
What they do: Host pet projects, experiment with Large Language Models (LLMs), or set up home labs.
Why ISPs should love them: They rarely call tech support. They know how to configure their own routers. They pay their bills on time and simply want to be left alone with a reliable pipe.
A Glimmer of Hope
There is finally some movement. I’m happy to report that one of the “Big Three” ISPs has finally started offering static IP addresses to private individuals. I’d like to believe that the persistent recommendations and feedback I (and many of you) have sent their way finally broke through the bureaucratic wall. It’s a small step, but a significant one. It proves that the “business-only” barrier was never a legal requirement — it was a lack of imagination.
Advice to Polish ISPs: Stop Being the Brake
If Poland wants to continue its trajectory as Europe’s premier tech hub, its digital infrastructure must keep pace. My advice to the providers is simple:
Offer Flexibility: Introduce 6-month or 12-month contracts, or at least a “fair move” clause that allows for penalty-free termination if you cannot provide service at a new location.
Acknowledge the Prosumer: The line between “home user” and “business user” has blurred. A developer running a local LLM node needs professional-grade features without the overhead of a B2B tax invoice.
Compete on Quality, Not Lock-in: When you make it easy for a client to leave, you give yourself the ultimate incentive to make them want to stay.
I sincerely hope that ISPs in Poland will stop serving as a brake for the country’s economic progress. We have the talent, we have the ambition — now we need freedom and the IP addresses to match.