BBC 3,4 and News 24 missing in R.o.I EPG

tommee

I read recently that Irish SKY viewers were soon to expect the extra BBC channels, including the CBBC for children, as NTL Digital in Dublin and Chorus in Cork are providing.
Theaddition of these channels will only improve viewing choice and add to Irish-British understanding.
The Irish SKY news will be available to UK viewers through the interactive box, helping the British see what is happening here.
Are there still plans for the BBC's to be available on EPG or was this a example similar to the reports of ITV and 4 being available here?

Sky being a commercial company are understood to have a separate charging structure for the Irish EPG.
In other words the BBC would have to pay to appear on it and they are not going to use UK licence payers money for that.
Sky on the other hand have a deal with "BBC world" where they pay the BBC to provide BBC one and two as part of the Irish Family package.
That was set up a few years ago long before the BBC decided to go the free to air route.
I would presume that Sky could negotiate with the BBc to put 3 and 4 etc on their package, but it would be of little use to them when they are FTA channels, so I guess they won't do it unless the BBC are going to pay for it.

DMC

Just a slight correction, its BBC Worldwide, the BBC's commercial arm, that the deal is struck with. Its the arm of the BBC that deal with NTL and Chorus and Sky over here for carriage on their systems.

They collect rates for the BBC from NTL/Chorus and Sky for showing their stations here. NTL has nearly all the BBC digital stations, including BBC World, but Sky has only negiotated for BBC 1 and 2 NI. But the other thing is that you can manually add the other BBC digital stations through the "add channels" functionality on Sky Digiboxes. I refer to the top sticky thread on how to do this on the main Satellite thread.