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

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 (now called Virgin Media). It continues to use the NTL brand under licence pending a rebranding, most likely as UPC Ireland.

Contents 1 Services 2 History 2.1 RTÉ / Telecom Éireann ownership 2.2 Sale to NTL 2.3 Sale to Morgan Stanley 3 NTL Digital EPG 4 Rebranding 5 External link

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.

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.

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 was 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 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 4 more years to integrate NTL Broadband service.

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.

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 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. For now, Liberty continues to use the NTL brand (under licence) in Ireland. However, 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. In December 2006 NTL's customer service department closed, and customer service was transfered to Chorus in Limerick. In January 2007, billing was transfered 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 passed. 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.

Below is the full list of channels on ntl Digital as at March 20th 2007. The availability of channels varies depending on the package chosen.

General Entertainment
101 RTE One
102 RTE Two
103 TV3
104 TG4
105 Setanta Ireland
106 Channel 6
107 City Channel
108 BBC ONE Northern Ireland
109 BBC TWO Northern Ireland
110 UTV
111 Channel 4
112 E4
113 E4+1
114 Sky One
115 Sky Two
116 BBC 3
117 BBC 4
118 More4
119 More4+1
120 UKTV Gold
121 UKTV Gold +1
122 UKTVG2
123 Hallmark
124 Living TV
125 Living TV +1
126 Reality TV
127 Paramount Comedy
128 Paramount Comedy 2
129 FTN
130 Sci-Fi Channel
151 UKTV Drama

News and Documentaries
201 BBC News 24
202 Sky News
203 Euro News
204 CNBC Europe
205 CNN
206 BBC World
207 Bloomberg
208 Discovery
209 Discovery + 1
210 Disc Travel & Living
211 Discovery Science
212 Disc Civilisation
213 Animal Planet
214 Discovery Turbo
215 National Geographic
216 National Geographic Wild
217 History Channel
218 Biography Channel

Movies
301 Sky Movies 1
302 Sky Movies 2
303 Sky Movies 3
304 Sky Movies 4
305 Sky Movies 5
306 Sky Movies 6
307 Sky Movies 7
308 Sky Movies 8
310 Sky Movies 9
311 Sky Movies 10
320 Sky Cinema 1
321 Sky Cinema 2
323 Film4
324 Film4 + 1
326 MGM Movies
327 TCM

Sports
401 Setanta Sports
402 Sky Sports 1
403 Sky Sports 2
404 Sky Sports 3
405 Sky Sports Extra
408 Sky Sports News
410 Setanta Xtra 1
411 Setanta Xrta 2
412 Celtic TV
413 Rangers TV
414 Setanta Golf
417 Racing UK
418 At The Races
420 NASN
422 Extreme Sports
423 Europort
427 Chelsea TV
428 MUTV

Lifestyle
501 E!
502 Fashion TV
503 UK TV Bright Ideas
504 Discovery Home & Health
505 QVC
506 ABC1
507 Discovery Real Time
508 Bravo
509 Bravo + 1
510 Men & Motors
511 Performance

Kids
601 The Den (relay of RTÉ Two)
603 Boomerang
604 Nickelodeon
605 Nick Replay
606 Nick Toons TV
607 Nick Jr
608 CBBC
609 Cbeebies
610 Jetix
613 Disney Channel
614 DisneyCin
615 Disney Cin+1
616 PlayDis
617 Toonami
618 Discovery Kids
620 Cartoon

Music
701 MTV
702 MTV 2
703 MTV Hits
704 MTV Base
705 MTV Dance
706 VH1
707 VH1 Classic
708 MTV Flux
709 TMF
710 The Box
711 Kiss TV
712 Smash Hits! TV
713 Magic
714 Q and FHM
715 Karrnag
716 The Hits

Specialist
808 Zee TV
815 EWTN
816 The God Channel
825 TV5MONDE Europe
831 Euronews (French)
832 Euronews (German)
833 Euronews (Italian)
834 Euronews (Spanish)
835 Euronews (Portuguese)
836 Euronews (Russian)
858 TVX
859 The Adult Channel
860 Playboy
861 PPV Football
862 PPV Channel

Radio
901 RTE Radio 1
902 RTÉ 2FM
903 RTÉ Lyric FM
904 100-102 Today FM
905 RTÉ Radio na Gaeltachta
906 BBC RADIO Ulster
907 BBC RADIO 1
908 BBC RADIO 2
909 BBC RADIO 3
910 BBC RADIO 4
911 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE
912 BBC 6 Music
913 BBC World Service
914 Galway Bay FM
915 Classic FM
916 Jazz FM
917 WRN
918 UCB Europe
919 Planet Rock
921 Core
922 Capital Gold
923 XFM
924 Kiss 100
925 Kerrang (Radio)
926 Smash Hits (Radio)
927 Radio Caroline
928 BBC 5 Live Extra
929 BBC 7
930 FM104
931 98FM
932 Newstalk
933 Dublin's Country Mix 106.8
934 Spin 1038

What is presumed to be the start of a rebranding process of NTL Ireland began in September 2006. On 5 September, digiboxes were updated to remove "Intermission" from the guide, and replace it with "Channel Off Air", and the ntl.ie website, which had long been dormant, was updated to a new layout extremely similar to that of chorus.ie, itself heavily based on upc.nl. It is unknown if the two updates are connected, but it is presumable that at the very least, the website update is part of the rebranding process.

It is unknown if, assuming a full rebranding is carried out, if UPC will merge the layouts of digital channels of the two. It is likely that if the channel numbers are merged, that a system similar to NTL Ireland's current one, as NTL currently has over well over 100 channels available, but Chorus only uses a 2-digit numbering system (with the exception of Channel 6, on channel #106. It may also cause some channels to be dropped or added - numerous channels are available only on NTL (e.g. some of the MTV UK and Ireland channels), which may either cause UPC to add all channels to both, drop the ones they don't have in common, or a mix of both. It should be pointed out that NTL in the UK continued to run two different channel layouts long after its merger with Cable and Wireless Communications, and continues to run three different operating systems (for the former NTL, CWC, and Telewest systems.) On 22 March 2007 Chorus adopted the NTL channel layout and a subset of their digital line up on digital cable only. The original Chorus line-up continues on MMDS for now however.

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 is due to take place no later than May 2007.

• NTL Ireland
• The Communications Interactive Agency Ireland