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NTL Ireland

*** Shopping-Tip: NTL Ireland
'''NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited''' is a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service MMDS company in the Republic of Ireland. As of 2005 it is owned by Liberty Global Europe (see history, below), having been divested by NTL. It continues to use the NTL brand under licence pending a rebranding, most likely as UPC Ireland.

Services
The company holds cable television licences for Dublin, Galway, and Waterford cities (with the Dublin licence also covering Leixlip, County Kildare, Dunboyne, County Meath, and Bray, County Wicklow). It also holds MMDS franchises for cells covering the above counties, as well as County Mayo. It provides an analogue cable television service (with a very high take up in its areas passed), which provides the Irish national channels, BBC One, BBC Two, UTV , Channel 4, Sky One, Sky News Ireland, and a small number of other channels. It also provides a digital television service, with over a third of its customer base taking a digital service. The company has also converted its entire MMDS network to digital, with an offering of approximately 70 TV and radio services. The analogue MMDS is now switched off. Over the past 2 years the company has been aggressively rolling out broadband and have enabled one third of its Dublin and 100% of its network in Galway and Waterford for Broadband. The company now provides one of the most attractive broadband service in Ireland and is rapidly becoming a major Broadband provider in Ireland.

History

RTÉ / Telecom ownership
The company began operations in 1970 as '''RTÉ Relays''', a subsidiary of Radio Telefís Éireann. It carried four channels - RTÉ Television, BBC One, BBC Two, and Ulster Television. In 1984, the company merged with Dublin Cable Systems, itself the product of a merger of Marlin Cable with Phoenix Relays. In 1986, the Irish Government began to allow Irish cable companies to carry non-terrestrial (ie satellite) services. In the same year, RTÉ merged all of its cable operations (including two other cable companies, Galway Cablevision and Waterford Cablevision) to form '''Cablelink Limited'''. As Cablelink, the company was Ireland's largest cable company by far, and expanded to a fifteen channel service (plus premium channels) gradually. In 1990, Telecom Éireann acquired 60% of the company from RTÉ. The biggest controversy the company managed to embroil itself during this time was a dispute with British Sky Broadcasting over carriage fees for Sky One and Sky News. This led to the two channels being pulled from the platform from 1992-1994. The "return of Bart Simpson" was prematurely announced by Cablelink several times before the channels actually reappeared.

Sale to NTL
In 1999, as part of the privatisation of Eircom, the Government put pressure on the shareholders of Cablelink to sell the company. Part of the reason was that Eircom was regarded by some as a "spoiler shareholder" in Cablelink, refusing to allow the company to compete in the voice telephony market that it dominated. The company was put up for auction, with bidders including BT Ireland Esat Telecom Group, NTL, and Liberty Global Europe UPC, as well as CMI Cable and Chorus Communications Irish Multichannel. It was eventually announced that NTL would acquire the company for Irish pound IEP 650m. Under NTL, the company was renamed NTL Ireland on 3 July 2000, and began offering telephony and internet services. The company began to upgrade its network and in 2001 launched its digital television service. However the company lost two chief executive officer managing directors during the time NTL ran the franchise. The biggest crisis erupted in early 2001, when NTL stopped selling its direct telephony and high-speed internet services, and halted the roll out of its upgraded hybrid fibre coax network. This led to a very public row with the Commission for Communications Regulation, and the resignation of Ian Jeffers, the NTL executive who had been assigned to the Dublin operation upon the NTL takeover. Some years later, the company was forced to suspend its telephone service after problems with the equipment emerged.

Sale to Morgan Stanley
In 2005, it emerged that NTL planned to sell its Irish business. As a result of its expected merger with Telewest Broadband, the Irish assets were now considered non-core. In May 2005, Morgan Stanley acquired the Irish assets of NTL on behalf of Liberty Global Europe (then called UGC Europe). For now the company continues to be run (under licence) as NTL Ireland. However a Competition Authority investigation into the proposed re-sale of the company to Liberty Global Europe took place. On 4 November 2005 it was announced the Competition Authority had cleared the deal, subject to the appointment of an independent director to the board of UPC Ireland and restrictions on the influence of John C. Malone on the running of the Irish business. The deal was approved by the Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Micheál Martin on 5 December 2005, and closed on 12 December 2005. It is expected that Liberty Global will shortly merge NTL Ireland with its existing Irish operations - Chorus Communications - as '''UPC Ireland'''.

External link

- NTL Ireland Category:Telecommunications companies

*** Shopping-Tip: NTL Ireland