UPC Satellite TV Services in Ireland?

bk

I was just thinking, I wonder would UPC ever think about launching TV services via satellite here in Ireland.

Bear with me for a moment. Recently a new ka satellite was launched which has a tight beam focused on Ireland which RTE are going to use to deliver their Free To Air service called Saorsat to all Irish homes later this year.

I wonder would this satellite have enough capacity to also carry all of UPC's TV channels, allowing UPC to compete directly with Sky?

UPC could then upgrade all their MMDS customers to this service, giving their MMDS customers more channels and HD and potentially if they could get agreement from Comreg, they could reuse their 2.6GHz MMDS frequency for LTE to deliver broadband and phone services also.

It isn't as mad as it first sounds, UPC already do digital satellite TV in other countries in Europe and it would allow UPC to offer digital TV, phone and BB to everyone in Ireland, not just people in cabled areas.

Of course Eircom, Vodafone, BT, etc. could also do the same, allowing them to have a combined sat/dsl box that uses sat to deliver TV and a DSL modem to deliver BB, phone, IPTV and VoD.

The only thing I'm not sure of, is there sufficient capacity on the new sat, anyone know?

The new operator could save bandwidth by using DVB-S2 and MPEG4 for all their channels from the start and not broadcasting SD channels where a HD simulcast channel exists (e.g. BBC One HD, RTE 2 HD, etc.).

Probably never happen, but an interesting idea.

thefishone

Interesting idea,but two things spring to mind.

1. Channel choice,can't see sky allowing a competitor to use its channels via Satellite and we may end up with even less choice.
2. Would UPC take a chance on people having a dish put on their house,getting used to it and then just changing over to freesat or Sky

Sponge Bob

They could. Only problems are that.

1. They only have 62000 MMDS customers left to port.
2. The Saorview Boxes may not support CI+ or Nagra3 or DVB-S, they could broadcast as DVB-T of course
3. Around 1m-1.2 homes have a Dish pointing at Astra2/1 and Hotbird + minority sats like Hispasat leaving only 600000 addressable English speaking households who may avail of such a service, admittedly including these 62000 MMDS customers.
4. MMDS is shrinking fast. 10000 a year +
5. ONLY 100,000 households at most will be forced to seriously consider saorsat and thereby have a Ka Sat dish _anyway_ the remainder will pick up Saorview Terrestrial.....heck 80% of households probably can already or only need rabbits ears and many of the rest will only require a bit of aerial work. Many or most of THESE 100,000 also have a Sky dish...sometimes to pick up RTE or TV3 properly. They can DROP a subscription.
6. Based on the costs of satellite bandwidth mentioned by RTE it would costa million or two minimum for the bandwidth on Ka Sat alone.

Just a selection of issues there for ya BK!

bk

thefishone wrote: »

Interesting idea,but two things spring to mind.

1. Channel choice,can't see sky allowing a competitor to use its channels via Satellite and we may end up with even less choice.

Aren't Sky required to make their channels available wholesale to all suppliers? They are in the UK at least.

Which raises an interesting idea, UPC could launch the service in the UK, targeting both UK and Ireland.

SB good points, but to be honest, I wasn't really thinking of it in terms of operating on saorsat or competing directly with saorsat, that was just what got me thinking about it.

Also I don't see the numbers of MMDS or saorsat customers is the limit of their addressable customers. I would see this as a possible cheaper alternative to Sky, possibly something like Real Digital.

Just an idea.

dunworth1

bk wrote: »

Aren't Sky required to make their channels available wholesale to all suppliers? They are in the UK at least.
.

if this is the case then why cant upc get the Sky hd channels

bk

dunworth1 wrote: »

if this is the case then why cant upc get the Sky hd channels

They are in the UK at least, Virgin Media (UK cable operator like UPC) now carry all the Sky HD channels except Atlantic.

dunworth1

bk wrote: »

They are in the UK at least, Virgin Media (UK cable operator like UPC) now carry all the Sky HD channels except Atlantic.

but wasnt that due to a deal they made when buying the living and bravo channels

vibe666

it might be a good idea, but this thread would probably be better served if it was moved into the Cable & Digital TV forum, but where could we find a mod to do that? :pac:

bk

vibe666 wrote: »

it might be a good idea, but this thread would probably be better served if it was moved into the Cable & Digital TV forum, but where could we find a mod to do that? :pac:

LOL I know, you can never find a mod when you need one

Unfortunately as I'm the mod of the Cable & Digital TV forum and not the Broadband forum, I can't move this thread. I can only move threads out of my own forums, but not into them.

I did think of posting it there, but I'm actually most interested in the aspect of freeing up the 2.6GHz frequency for possible BB use, which is why I posted it here.

If one of the BB forum mods wants to move it to the Satellite forum that would be cool.

Sponge Bob

The 2.6ghz band, a nice fat block of 190mhz of spectrum, will be used to provide lots of mobile broadband in URBAN areas in Ireland once MMDS kindly fecks off and dies. MMDS seems set fair to die naturally by 2015 latest if nobody does anything to it and by 2014 if given a few prods.

UPC know that. Were they to set up an open access RAN shared 2.6ghz LTE network in the main cities ( except Galway) by 2013 they might win 'their' spectrum back in an open auction the same year or next :cool:

But it is risky!