04-12-2016, 05:15 PM
Here in Ireland, NTL and Chorus strung coax along soffits and slung sometimes between houses without a support wire. Chorus put coax in a slot in the tarmac In Cork city in one area (without Council knowledge) and filled with tar. Years later the council was resurfacing with machine. The surface scrapped off gets recycled.
1) Everyone complains to UPC/Virgin about no TV or BB.
2) Council fines UPC (as they "inherited" Chorus liabilities by buying them) for illegally laying cables and thus contamination such that the scraped off surface can't be recycled.
Oops!
Chorus Analogue used ghastly Jerrold cable boxes originally and when changeing their badly engineered 2.5 GHz MMDS from AM Analogue (not FM!) to Digital used DVB-T with too poor a signal. So less channels and frequent freezing compared to NTL MMDS which used better engineered links, signal margin and eventually DVB-c for MMDS Digital.
When UPC bought both outfits and upgraded to PVR and HFC on cable they had to replace a lot of cable that could barely do 560MHz, never mind 750MHz or 862MHz. Some areas only used up to 460MHz for cable and some areas had the cable simply fed from MMDS downconverter (175MHz to 375MHz).
UPC wanted to use DOCSIS on the MMDS (Such systems do exist) back in 2007, but Comreg (Irish equiv. to Ofcom), wouldn't licence it. So the Rural people had no BB. The Ex-Chorus rural folk (DVB-T MMDS) had no PVR either, though the ex NTL MMDS folk got the regular cable TV PVR. The MMDS mesh dish has the downconverter to VHF/Hyperbband on it powered by 12V or 18V up the coax, depending on model.
Then recently the MMDS was turned off. The 2.5GHz to 2.7GHz spectrum (later reduced to only 100MHz) was awarded to Chorus and NTL originally in violation of ITU and European designations, it should have been 3.5GHz. The spectrum will will soon be auctioned for LTE (4G) Mobile, as in the rest of Europe and UK.
The UK cable was originally different operators, inc NTL who is now Arqiva. It's amazing the problems that companies inherit. The UK Virgin Cable is only branding, like recently rebranded Irish Virgin (which has only just recently rebranded to UPC with the Dutch Tulip logo), is really UPC, which isn't really Dutch as it's owned by USA Liberty Global.
So yes, there was a LOAD of flimsy & rubbish USA kit in Ireland on Cable. RTE had originally owned a lot of what NTL bought in Dublin. The Government forced RTE to divest.
Casey Cable is still indepenent in Waterford, first broadband in Ireland and first with HFC ultra fast gigabit with no cap. I think there might still be a small cable company in Longford.
Originally all the MMDS & Cable and so called "Deflectors" (private UHF retransmission of 2 to 5 channels!) paid no royalty, nor asked permission. Free to Air is NOT Free to Carry! Then Government brought in a law in response to TV sans Frontieres etc forcing everyone (inc NTL & Chorus!) to negotiate with the UK and pay royalties. By then NTL & Chorus were paying the Pay TV channel providers based on number of subscribers. The FTA UK channels are actually a reasonable flat rate royalty based on geographic coverage. Dutch Cable carries some UK FTA channels.
BBC World TV is Free To Carry, but you have to have permission.
You can't put your own local adverts in! A Limerick Radio station was retransmitting Channel 5 and doing local "opt outs". So lost retransmission licence. They also maybe the only Irish Radio station to lose the Radio licence too! Their radio content was on Satellite for a while after the terrestrial licence taken over.
1) Everyone complains to UPC/Virgin about no TV or BB.
2) Council fines UPC (as they "inherited" Chorus liabilities by buying them) for illegally laying cables and thus contamination such that the scraped off surface can't be recycled.
Oops!
Chorus Analogue used ghastly Jerrold cable boxes originally and when changeing their badly engineered 2.5 GHz MMDS from AM Analogue (not FM!) to Digital used DVB-T with too poor a signal. So less channels and frequent freezing compared to NTL MMDS which used better engineered links, signal margin and eventually DVB-c for MMDS Digital.
When UPC bought both outfits and upgraded to PVR and HFC on cable they had to replace a lot of cable that could barely do 560MHz, never mind 750MHz or 862MHz. Some areas only used up to 460MHz for cable and some areas had the cable simply fed from MMDS downconverter (175MHz to 375MHz).
UPC wanted to use DOCSIS on the MMDS (Such systems do exist) back in 2007, but Comreg (Irish equiv. to Ofcom), wouldn't licence it. So the Rural people had no BB. The Ex-Chorus rural folk (DVB-T MMDS) had no PVR either, though the ex NTL MMDS folk got the regular cable TV PVR. The MMDS mesh dish has the downconverter to VHF/Hyperbband on it powered by 12V or 18V up the coax, depending on model.
Then recently the MMDS was turned off. The 2.5GHz to 2.7GHz spectrum (later reduced to only 100MHz) was awarded to Chorus and NTL originally in violation of ITU and European designations, it should have been 3.5GHz. The spectrum will will soon be auctioned for LTE (4G) Mobile, as in the rest of Europe and UK.
The UK cable was originally different operators, inc NTL who is now Arqiva. It's amazing the problems that companies inherit. The UK Virgin Cable is only branding, like recently rebranded Irish Virgin (which has only just recently rebranded to UPC with the Dutch Tulip logo), is really UPC, which isn't really Dutch as it's owned by USA Liberty Global.
So yes, there was a LOAD of flimsy & rubbish USA kit in Ireland on Cable. RTE had originally owned a lot of what NTL bought in Dublin. The Government forced RTE to divest.
Casey Cable is still indepenent in Waterford, first broadband in Ireland and first with HFC ultra fast gigabit with no cap. I think there might still be a small cable company in Longford.
Originally all the MMDS & Cable and so called "Deflectors" (private UHF retransmission of 2 to 5 channels!) paid no royalty, nor asked permission. Free to Air is NOT Free to Carry! Then Government brought in a law in response to TV sans Frontieres etc forcing everyone (inc NTL & Chorus!) to negotiate with the UK and pay royalties. By then NTL & Chorus were paying the Pay TV channel providers based on number of subscribers. The FTA UK channels are actually a reasonable flat rate royalty based on geographic coverage. Dutch Cable carries some UK FTA channels.
BBC World TV is Free To Carry, but you have to have permission.
You can't put your own local adverts in! A Limerick Radio station was retransmitting Channel 5 and doing local "opt outs". So lost retransmission licence. They also maybe the only Irish Radio station to lose the Radio licence too! Their radio content was on Satellite for a while after the terrestrial licence taken over.
