UPC to offer mobile

Freddie59

CABLE TV and telecoms provider UPC Ireland is likely to launch a mobile phone service here to bolster its existing triple-play offering of digital TV, broadband and fixed-line telephone.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0819/1224302701765.html

coylemj

Classic media spin, say you 'might' do something or 'we'll explore it' and the paper reports it as a fact. I'm frankly very surprised at the IT.

First three paragraphs below, notice how the prospect goes from 'likely' in p1 to 'on the horizon' in p2 and then 'we'll explore it' in p3.

CABLE TV and telecoms provider UPC Ireland is likely to launch a mobile phone service here to bolster its existing triple-play offering of digital TV, broadband and fixed-line telephone.

“It’s on the horizon but it’s not something we will be launching this year,” UPC Ireland chief executive Dana Strong told The Irish Times in her first media interview since taking over in May.

“Over time, it would be a good feature to add to our product kit. We’ve said before that we’re interested, we’re open-minded, we’ll explore it, but we won’t be doing that before Christmas.”

AntiVirus

coylemj wrote: »

Classic media spin, say you 'might' do something or 'we'll explore it' and the paper reports it as a fact. I'm frankly very surprised at the IT.

First three paragraphs below, notice how the prospect goes from 'likely' in p1 to 'on the horizon' in p2 and then 'we'll explore it' in p3.

CABLE TV and telecoms provider UPC Ireland is likely to launch a mobile phone service here to bolster its existing triple-play offering of digital TV, broadband and fixed-line telephone.

“It’s on the horizon but it’s not something we will be launching this year,” UPC Ireland chief executive Dana Strong told The Irish Times in her first media interview since taking over in May.

“Over time, it would be a good feature to add to our product kit. We’ve said before that we’re interested, we’re open-minded, we’ll explore it, but we won’t be doing that before Christmas.”

So you've figured out that they may launch a mobile service here!


The more competition the better.

Venom

coylemj wrote: »

Classic media spin, say you 'might' do something or 'we'll explore it' and the paper reports it as a fact. I'm frankly very surprised at the IT.

First three paragraphs below, notice how the prospect goes from 'likely' in p1 to 'on the horizon' in p2 and then 'we'll explore it' in p3.

CABLE TV and telecoms provider UPC Ireland is likely to launch a mobile phone service here to bolster its existing triple-play offering of digital TV, broadband and fixed-line telephone.

“It’s on the horizon but it’s not something we will be launching this year,” UPC Ireland chief executive Dana Strong told The Irish Times in her first media interview since taking over in May.

“Over time, it would be a good feature to add to our product kit. We’ve said before that we’re interested, we’re open-minded, we’ll explore it, but we won’t be doing that before Christmas.”

Does read like PR spin all right but maybe they plan on offering a 4G service which can't begin until the changeover to digital happens at the end of this year?

KrisW

Considering that 4G interferes with cable TV distribution, it'd be pretty ironic. (one source)

drunkmonkey

4G licences haven't even came up for tender yet.

Kensington

We're a while away from 4G here!

Analogue switchover isn't complete until Jan 1st, 2013.
The 900MHz and 1800MHz bands are tied up until as far away as 2015.
No-one is going to exactly run to grab the 1800MHz+ bands - they already got badly stung with 3G on that one...


Anyway, UPC have been promising Video On Demand for donkey's years and they're only now beginning to recruit people to build the infrastructure. So we're still another year or two away from VoD.

Going by that timeline, I think we can expect to see mobile from them some time in 2019 :P

KrisW

I think they're spreading FUD, tbh, but the amount of work for them to set up as a MVNO (Virtual Network - like Tesco using O2's infrastructure) is not as big as for a completely new entrant, because they've got the fixed-line termination in place.

4G is a good way off, and LTE isn't 4G; it's the set of technologies that bring 3G networks up to the point where a switch to 4G is possible.

Some of the US networks' marketing departments have really muddied the waters in this, calling high-speed 3g networks "4G" when they're not even LTE.

1G = circuit-switched analogue; 2G = circuit-switched digital voice and data; 3G = circuit-switched voice; packet-switched data; 4G = packet-switched voice and data; all other uses are marketing bull****

maxwell smart

I have UPC, they are in theory supplying me with phone, internet and TV.

If the quality of any proposed mobile phone service is as reliable as the service they already offer we will all be better with smoke signals. For them, going 4G would be the equivilant of upgrading from smoke signals to 2 tin cans with a piece of string:D

drunkmonkey

Nice Analogy:)