Bad news for digico ...

zenith

From MCM Communications' Newsletter:

The value of Granada and Carlton shares rose during the week. The reason? Rumours that they plan to get out off the ITV Digital project. This is the terrestrial system, same as the proposed Digico Platform for Ireland.

The two companies are joint owners and have so far put £850m into it. That has bought them the infrastructure and a little over one million subscribers.

The belief is that Sky Digital (with over 5m subscribers) will buy the business, or more importantly, the subscribers. Whether they persevere with the terrestrial business is a moot point, although it could give Sky some terrestrial, albeit digital, distribution in the UK.

Mossy Monk

this is more a slap across the face for the government more than anything else. if they weren't so slow about DTT, Sky would not be rounding up alot of the population with their minidish and digibox offer. i still plan on getting DTT for the bedroom though

I'm nearly fed up saying this but here goes again...

What happens in Britain on the digital terrestial front, while interesting, has precious little to do with such a project in Ireland.
I say its interesting because its an example ofhow not to go about setting up a Digital service .
Firstly: Because all analogue transmitters in the UK are UHF and the ITV digital ( previously "on digital") transmissions are also on UHF , the latter have had to be very low power-this is so they wont interfere with the majority of peoples analogue signals.
The end result of that has been a disasterously poor coverage for Digital terestial in the UK-most people having to put up a new outdoor aerial to get it.
This has given it a bad name.
Secondly: as most of the UK population live in towns and cities, many are served by cable systems.these are being offered digital with no aerial or minidish-ITV Digital already having such a bad name for reception there, means the majority aren't going to switch to it.
Thirdly: If you have a bad name for reception ( and believe me ITV digital has ) and you live in a rural area-of course you will go to Sky.
The situation in the Republic of Ireland is entirely different!!!
Here the Government through the ODTR has regulated that who ever gets the Irish DTT licence must make reception available on indoor aerials;this being done through transmitters operating with 50 kw powers-In the UK,the ERP of digital transmitters is generally around 1-2 kw.
The effect of that regulation is massive and in my opinion alone sets an Irish service miles apart from the one in the UK.

eg: picture being an NTL subscriber in Dublin- to get an alternative service all you would have to do is go down to your local retailer, sign up , pay your sub and bring home a set top box, that can be plugged in and set up as easy as a video!
Now compare that to sky??? for the same switch-you would have to put up a dish and pay £60-£80,or more, for the instalation(not to mention extra cable if the dish has to be sited in an awkward place-or worse still cannot be mounted at all),before paying any sub.

There are other issues in the Republic of Ireland, that also favour a much better take up of DTT than in the UK.
Historically, the demand for multichannel here has been for BBC and ITV-these were always obviously available in the UK-meaning that in the UK, demand for multichannel was always going to be "Sky based".
Also, Much of Ireland is served by an atrocious Chorus Cable and MMDS service-I suspect that the fact that switching to an Irish DTT service as described above is so simple,that getting disgruntled Chorus customers to move would not be difficult.

Of course the argument that Sky is taking over could also be applied to Eircell prior to the arrival of Esat Digifone-I think the latter is doing ok at moment- as will the new one ( great TV adds for meteor btw but thats another story )
I've tasted ITV digital and cant wait to see the Irish version-So Ethain Doyle if you are reading this....Pleeeease hurry up and get it up and running!
mm

byte

I would get DTT too for terrestrial channels and UK terrestrials (though they will prob be all on Sky by time we see it). I will only consider DTT if it is subsidised like in UK. I would not fork out £350ish for a receiver and whatever else. The prepay system that is used in UK seems a good idea to me.