NTL Ireland
NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited is a
cable television and
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.
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,
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 is rapidly becoming a major Broadband provider in Ireland.
RTÉ / Telecom 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.
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
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£650m (€825 million).
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 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
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.
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.
*
NTL Ireland
