NTL Ireland

NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited

Type	Private limited company by shares
Industry	Communications
Founded	Dublin, Ireland (1970) (as RTÉ Relays Limited).
Headquarters	Dublin, Ireland
Area served	Ireland
Products	Cable television, communications
Parent	UPC Communications Ireland Ltd.
Website	upc.ie

NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited was a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) company in the Republic of Ireland. As of 2005 it was owned by Liberty Global Europe (see history, below), having been divested by NTL (now called Virgin Media). It has been rebranded 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 terrestrial channels, plus BBC One, BBC Two, UTV, Channel 4, Sky1 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 seventy TV and radio services. The analogue MMDS is now switched off.

Over the past two 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 is rapidly becoming a major Broadband provider in Ireland.

History

RTÉ / Telecom Éireann ownership

The company began operations in 1970 as RTÉ Relays, a subsidiary of Radio Telefís Éireann. It carried four channels - RTÉ Television, BBC1 , BBC2, 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.^[1] 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.

The company also wished to develop broadband services in 1997/1998 but there was an embargo on developing and selling Internet services by the main shareholders, Telecom Éireann, but the management felt if it were developed and a trial launched then there would be no stopping this. To conceal this from the Board, they hired a small Dublin company The Communications Interactive Agency to manage and run the trial. To this end all purchases of equipment and Internet Services were done in their name. At the time they were one of the first to demonstrate VOIP in Ireland as a commercial service which was done by the then Managing Director Alex Gogan at the Press Launch, by dialling live the Speaking Clock in New York using Net2phone.com service.

At the time they were one of the first companies in Europe to trial and launch Broadband services. What stopped the trial from becoming a full roll out across their network was the purchase by NTL. It took the company almost four more years to integrate NTL Broadband service.

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 Esat Telecom Group, NTL, and UPC, as well as CMI Cable and Irish Multichannel. It was eventually announced that NTL would acquire the company for IR£535.18m (nearly €680 million).^[2]

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 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 Liberty Global

Despite NTL Ireland turning a profit as a result of its expected merger with Telewest, the Irish assets were now considered non-core. In May 2005, NTL sold its Irish business to Morgan Stanley (on behalf of Liberty Global Europe (then called UGC Europe)). MS Irish Cable Holdings, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, held the stake on UGC's behalf, until the deal received regulatory clearance.

However a Competition Authority investigation into the proposed resale 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 Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Micheál Martin on 5 December 2005, and closed on 12 December 2005. For now, Liberty continues to use the "Chorus NTL" brand (under licence) in Ireland. Most aspects of the company have now been merged with Chorus (billing, website etc.). Branding has also been unified as "Chorus NTL", but a rebrand to UPC Ireland has yet to take place. In an interview with Marketing (Ireland's Marketing and Media Monthly) Ed Sawday, Sky Ireland's head of Marketing, stated "it's interesting what UPC have done with the brand. They've been in a period of hiatus in delivering a recognizable brand to their customers - is it NLT or Chorus? When NTL rebranded in the UK as Virgin Media, it was almost an overnight transition", according to the article Sawday does not believe that UPC wish to be marred by older companies brands.

In early 2006 the two companies were placed under a single management team. On 3 July 2006 it was reported on RTÉ News that as part of the merger, up to 350 jobs would be lost, including the closure of NTL's call centre in Waterford. The two brands remain for the time being however. In December 2006 NTL's customer service department closed, and customer service was transferred to Chorus in Limerick. In January 2007, billing was transferred to a new system. This has proved to be controversial. A €2 charge for customers paying by means other than Direct Debit was planned, but the Consumer Protection Act, 2007 will outlaw this when its section 48 is brought into effect. Alongside this came a tougher credit control policy. Bills generated using the new system also refer to the digital TV package as "UPC Digital", in reference to the forthcoming rebranding.

NTL Digital EPG

Main article: List of channels on UPC Ireland

Rebranding

On 25 January 2007, NTL Ireland updated the electronic programme guide software to remove the NTL logo and all mention of the NTL name. However the UPC name has not replaced it, the areas which contained the NTL logo simply having been left blank. The colour scheme is still NTL's. From 31 January 2007, NTL and Chorus began advertising jointly, although the adverts were simply the ongoing campaign from NTL with the Chorus logo added to them.

In a Sunday Business Post article on 11 February 2007, UPC Ireland's marketing manager revealed that the rebrand was due to take place no later than May 2007. That did not happen, although, from July 2007, a composite "Chorus NTL" logo has been used in all advertising, with the tagline "A UPC Company" below. It is now expected that the full rebrand will take place in early 2008. In later September and early October NTL included a leaflet with its bills stating a new logo would appear on bills from 21 October. Although many took that to read that the relaunch would happen on that day, this did not occur.

On 14 August 2007 NTL launched a personal video recorder, the UPC Mediabox. Chorus will launch the same device in its cable areas in Autumn 2007. This was followed, on 30 October 2007, NTL and Chorus' websites were merged under a single site, though the composite Chorus NTL logo is used on the site rather than the UPC logo.

Most users of the EPG have now been switched fully to the new UPC EPG, taking the NTL EPG off air.

The company was rebranded on 4 May 2010.^[3]

External links

• IrishTelecoms.com - Guide to Telecoms in Ireland
• UPC Ireland
• The Communications Interactive Agency Ireland
• Alex Gogan

References

1. ^ "History of Multichannel Broadcasting in Ireland". Irish Cable & Digital Guide. http://www.iolfree.ie/~icdg/feature_history.htm. Retrieved 2 February 2011. 
2. ^ "ntl completes acquisition of largest cable television operator in Ireland" (Press release). Virgin Media. 9 July 1999. http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=205406&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=935385. Retrieved 2011-04-17. 
3. ^ Ciaran Hancock (4 May 2010). "UPC to spend €3m on rebranding". Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0504/breaking43.htm. Retrieved 2 February 2011.