Property Developers and Small <snip> Cable Companies

Sponge Bob

Some small recently established cable companies such as Broadworks and <snip> are doing deals with property developers to get exclusive access to their developments.

They ensure that the more reputable operators like NTL and (even) Chorus are excluded . Bad as NTL and Chorus can be they do not stipulate that the developer must ban SKY dishes when they connect their cable but their new peers often do.

There are others whose M/O I know nothing of , eg ChoiceDigital, Communications Control, È3 Broadband , Centrecom , Grame Technologies , E-nvi , Magnet .

Then they deliver substandard TV and BB in certain cases and leave the inhabitants with no decent options for their TV, lots of these places inconveniently ban SKY dishes and create a TV monopoly for these cable operators because thats whats in the contract with the cable operator.

Is it time to regulate the Cable sector again even if only to bring in a universal minimum standard of packages and BB for everybody ?

L1011

e-nvi cover the estate behind mine, its IPTV. But they won't provide phone or internet (even though the 'cable' is cat6!!) to people and Eircom are trying to wiggle out of the USO by saying that e-nvi provide them

Contracts ban Sky dishes, specifically by name as "Sky Digital dishes". As a result theres a lot of standard white dishes, some up to 1.2M, hanging off balconies

Sponge Bob

MYOB wrote:

Eircom are trying to wiggle out of the USO by saying that e-nvi provide them

Thats crap seeing as e-nvi are not designated by Comreg as a (the) USO carrier and therefore do not have to provide it. BTW HOW can you offer IPTV without Internet ?????

Contracts ban Sky dishes, specifically by name as "Sky Digital dishes". As a result theres a lot of standard white dishes, some up to 1.2M, hanging off balconies

LOL ROFLMAO and them only 60cm wide in the east and a discreet black colour to boot.

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

Thats crap seeing as e-nvi are not designated by Comreg as a (the) USO carrier and therefore do not have to provide it. BTW HOW can you offer IPTV without Internet ?????

LOL ROFLMAO and them only 60cm wide in the east and a discreet black colour to boot.

If you only have enough BW for IPTV and don't provide a user interface only a Set-top box. The MAC address or a user/pass could enable the set-top box. Magnet with 8MBps can only just mangage to do both.

Sponge Bob

They use CATV or CATVI cables Watty , they could go to 1 GBit inside some of those estates.

What I would like to know is whether they ALL should have to offer a minimum set of packages like

a) 20 channels and 2Mbits/256 contended max 20:1 for no more than €39.99 a month incl vat
b) sports channel packages at no more than sky price + 10%
c) movie channel packages at no more than sky price + 10%

and what the regulator is doing about this (1 guess ....scratchings their ********)

watty

yes but you don't need any or very much back haul Internet if you pickup cable/Satellite/Terrestrial local to the development and feed it as IPTV.

I agree it is disgusting the lack of USO for 28K dialup, BB, ducting for choice of providers etc... Deregulation is supposed to make it easier for the consumer to get choice of supplier, instead consumers are getting ripped off.

Note EU comments to Mobile Phone operators regarding "Free market" and "Regulation". EU has basically decided that ALL the operators have colluded to rip of customers with 90%++ margins on roaming. It costs some operators in reality nothing more than Irish calls, which themselves are rip off.

This is the same greedy "rip off people as they have no real choice" ploy.

Ulsterman 1690

Who the hell are Broadworks, <snip> etc. ?

What franchise areas do they operate in ?

What kind of technology (cable/MMDS/DSL/fibreoptic etc) do they use ?

I thought CATV was considered to be a "natural monopoly" so how can one have two cable companies in the same area (especially when the MMDS and cablenets are owned by the same company) ?

icdg

There are, except in very small cases, no cable franchises any more. NTL and Chorus both had their exclusivity clauses removed for various reasons a couple of years ago. Only the small cable companies who wanted to keep the 1974 licences (as opposed to the 1999 ones, which NTL, Chorus, and also Casey Cablevision use) have exclusivity now. (To somewhat contradict that statement, Casey never broke their licence so I'm sure what Casey's position re exclusivity is).

Upshot is though, in the former NTL and Chorus areas, other cable companies are allowed to compete. Magnet is the biggest, but there are some others around as mentioned above. Some of them may use traditional CATV, but IPTV seems to be more common.

They seem to be good at doing what NTL and Chorus always promised, but never quite delivered in the Irish - triple play: TV, telephone, and internet from the one provider.

What is possibly the problem is that the digital television services they offer seem to be almost always substandard to Chorus Digital, never mind NTL Digital. They seem to lack Sky One and Sky News (which to me, are still make-or-break channels for any cable offering I would take).

GerardKeating

icdg wrote:

What is possibly the problem is that the digital television services they offer seem to be almost always substandard to Chorus Digital, never mind NTL Digital. They seem to lack Sky One and Sky News (which to me, are still make-or-break channels for any cable offering I would take).

I used to think Sky-One was an essential chanell, but BittTorrent is a good replacement

bk

icdg wrote:

They seem to be good at doing what NTL and Chorus always promised, but never quite delivered in the Irish - triple play: TV, telephone, and internet from the one provider.

Recently I've been looking at new apartment developments around Dublin and I've come across these jokers in many developments. Mostly they seem to be using plain Catv and only offering a very basic (crap) analogue TV service.

Magnet are the only ones really offering IPTV.

icdg wrote:

What is possibly the problem is that the digital television services they offer seem to be almost always substandard to Chorus Digital, never mind NTL Digital. They seem to lack Sky One and Sky News (which to me, are still make-or-break channels for any cable offering I would take).

Your lucky to get Digital service at all.

cgarvey

bk wrote:

Magnet are the only ones really offering IPTV.

Is that not what Smart are doing too, in their fibre estates?

bk

cgarvey wrote:

Is that not what Smart are doing too, in their fibre estates?

Yes you are right, I forgot about Smart Vision. However I haven't seen or heard of any developments with it, Smart seem to be far less active with this then Magnet.

watty

Perhaps they wait for cheaper HD capabel MPEG4 set top boxes. IPTV based on MPEG2 is silly (Magnet) but the MPEG4 chips / boxes only generally available since Nov 2005

Sponge Bob

some Smart tripleplay installs have been crap too I hear . The entire alt.cable sector in Dublin now has a bad reputation, these jokers have not appeared much outside the Dublin region. .

Freddie59

GerardKeating wrote:

I used to think Sky-One was an essential chanell, but BittTorrent is a good replacement

Ouch!!!:D

Ulsterman 1690

There are, except in very small cases, no cable franchises any more. NTL and Chorus both had their exclusivity clauses removed for various reasons a couple of years ago......Upshot is though, in the former NTL and Chorus areas, other cable companies are allowed to compete. Magnet is the biggest, but there are some others around as mentioned above. Some of them may use traditional CATV, but IPTV seems to be more common.

IPTV ? Is that over a phoneline like DSL ???

If youve two or three cable companies in one area how does that work ? This business of stringing cables between peoples houses was bad enough but if theres multiple outfits at it it must look a right bloody mess ? :eek:

Or is it all underground now (In which case there must be constantant digging up of pavements and wotnot ???)

bk

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

IPTV ? Is that over a phoneline like DSL ???

IPTV means delivered TV via IP packets. It can be delivered over DSL (phones), cable Broadband or fibre, but when most people talk about it in Ilrenad, they mean over DSL (phone) as cable and fibre have better (more effieicient and higher quality) ways of delivering TV.

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

If youve two or three cable companies in one area how does that work ? This business of stringing cables between peoples houses was bad enough but if theres multiple outfits at it it must look a right bloody mess ? :eek:

Or is it all underground now (In which case there must be constantant digging up of pavements and wotnot ???)

Many of these developments are apartment buildings, so I assume they can gain access to ducts from the management companies.

jusmeig

I suffer from this problem too. We have broadworks and have no option for another service provider. The picture quality is terrible. We have complained to the compeition authority but nothing has been done to date.

Broadworks Communications Complaints Welcome!!!!!!

loyatemu

I doubt that there are very many areas in the city that have access to more than 1 cable provider - in most areas it's just NTL.

The real issue is the ban on satellite dishes and aerials, but this is not always at the insistence of the cable company - in many cases it is a planning condition laid down by the council (and with good reason - apartment blocks covered in satellite dishes are an eyesore). This is the case in my estate (serviced by NTL-MMDS) but the ban is widely ignored.

dkane

Been wondering about these small cable companies for a while.
Do they need permission from the channel owners to carry their channels? For example do they have the consent from RTE/BBC/Sky etc to rebroadcast their channels?

watty

There are several kinds of content:
Must carry (i.e. RTE)
Free To Air but not Free To carry: SkyNews, CNBC, etc.
Free to Air and Free To carry (Possibly BBC World Service)
Pay lots to Carry (Sky1, Sky Sports)
Free to Air but not free in Ireland (ALL UK terrestrial)

A few stations are free to carry. Most you have to pay for based on the size of subscriber base.

There is also Pay per view and 3rd party subscription were the cable /broadcaster acts as agent for Sky, Setanta, Playboy etc.

It's against Irish law to Broadcast others content without permision. Unless it's the handful of Free to carry (permission still required), it cost money.


They can only ban dishes on the front. Apartment blocks should at build time have communial dish.

ciaran76

In the complex I live in the apartments have a communal dish but people still decide to get their own dish.

I live in the houses and we have access to the dish too but this is were the fun begins !

We can have Sky but to use the communal dish we need to give an extra €18 a month to have access to it(thats on top of the standard pricing).This service is provided by a cable company which I cant remember thier name at the moment.

We can have NTL for NTL prices and provided by NTL.

When the cable guys came to the door I asked what they could provide that NTL couldn't and they mentioned 1 or 2 channels and I was shocked thats all they could come up with.

I chose NTL as it was cheaper and provided us with what we needed. Anyway a few people have gone with cable company and the have had nothing but trouble.

I have had 1 full day internet downtime and 1 half day tv down time in 2 years which is not bad compared to what I have read on here.

My parent and best friend live about 5 mins away and they have NTL and theirs is down at least once a month. We must be on a totally different line or something.