UPC continue to lose MMDS customers

The Cush

Figures released this week show the number of MMDS subscribers continue to decrease.

At the end of June they had 59,900 MMDS subscribers, down 2,900 in 3 months. In the Jan-Mar period they also lost 2,200 subscribers.

They had a total of 65,000 subscribers at the end of Dec 2010 down from 74,300 at the end of Dec 2009.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0804/1224301822692.html
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/upc-subscribers-up-by-11pc-2839240.html

Can UPC justify 200 MHz of spectrum for less than 60,000 subscribers? A Comreg expert report and consultation is due in Dec. MMDS Licence review and liberalisation due next March.

Kensington

Is it any great surprise? The channel line-up on MMDS is extremely slim, no DVR, no HD. It just cannot compete with Sky.

Moriarty

No surprise to anyone I'm sure. There's no competing with Sky on the MMDS platform the way it is at present.

Hopefully this spectrum will be recovered next year by comreg and reallocated for fixed wireless access provision. That amount of spectrum would go a long way to providing a lot of people with decent broadband.

The Cush

Moriarty wrote: »

Hopefully this spectrum will be recovered next year by comreg and reallocated for fixed wireless access provision. That amount of spectrum would go a long way to providing a lot of people with decent broadband.

Possibly reduction from 18 x 8MHz digital multiplexes/channels to 10 or 11 would be my guess.

Solair

I would speculate that UPC will ditch MMDS as soon as they can.

UPC is stuck with a legacy of Chorus' idiotic late 90s / early 00s decision to not roll cable out in cable-franchise areas, particularly in some housing estates in Cork and Limerick and in many of the satellite towns around Cork and probably areas of North County Dublin etc

I would speculate that they will do their damnedest to keep any potentially cableable households on MMDS until they can get them up and running as the customer database is worth something to them.

Rural MMDS is pointless as it cannot compete with Sky or FreeSat and there is absolutely no prospect of cable being rolled out ever in rural areas. It's just not practical.

UPC's unique selling point is cable broadband. Their MMDS TV product is simply non competitive, in fact their cable TV product is only OK. It's a LOT better than MMDS, but it's not better than Sky. However, combine it with broadband and phone and you've got an absolutely killer product.

Cable also has a future of serious interactivity and video on demand. MMDS will never be able to do that.

lucernarian

MMDS licensing was more of a govt. policy idea to give multichannel TV to the rural masses in the pre-sky era, I thought?

Either way, UPC's inaction on improving MMDS has been palpable. The MMDS spectrum allocation could manage decent DOCSIS broadband in many areas but not at the speeds that UPC now have. And providing DOCSIS may require fibre provision at the MMDS sites if microwave links don't provide enough capacity.

They deserve not to have the license extended at this rate.

gpjordanf1

Kensington wrote: »

Is it any great surprise? The channel line-up on MMDS is extremely slim, no DVR, no HD. It just cannot compete with Sky.

Have DVR since it was initally launched on UPC and I'm on MMDS.

Kensington

gpjordanf1 wrote: »

Have DVR since it was initally launched on UPC and I'm on MMDS.

The small ex-NTL MMDS network is DVB-C so supports the DVR.
The ex-Chorus MMDS network, which makes up most of the MMDS system, is DVB-T and upc's DVR doesn't support that system.

Solair

Does the ex-NTL MMDS network have a cut-down subset of the channels on cable?

The ex-Chorus digital MMDS line-up was pretty limited when I last saw it and the STB equipment seems pretty rough and ready basic off-the-shelf type stuff too.

Kensington

I think - but am not entirely sure - the ex-NTL and ex-chorus MMDS lineups now match each other.

The ex-NTL gear is the standard UPC stuff they use on the cable networks.
Ex-chorus uses Sagem gear from France with custom software and a Nagra CAM.

icdg

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

MMDS licensing was more of a govt. policy idea to give multichannel TV to the rural masses in the pre-sky era, I thought?

Sky had launched two years or thereabouts before MMDS, but never provided any UK terrestrial channels - even in the UK - until Channel 5 launched in 1997, and did not provide the BBC until digital launched in 1998 (and not in Ireland until 2001).

Sky's direct-to-home viewership in Ireland was tiny up until 2001. This had as much to do with an install cost into the hundreds (there were no "authorised Sky installers" - you did the job yourself or got an installer to do it for you privately, in the same way as a free-to-air satellite installation today. Nor were there official Sky set top boxes in the pre-digital era - you used off-the-shelf equipment). When Sky Digital launched the set-up fee in Ireland was set at £450 (this was actually the unsubsidised price of a Sky Digibox) and didn't drop until 2001.

I'm not sure who actually pushed the licencing of MMDS in Ireland in the first place - it doesn't seem like something the Government would have come up with on its on accord. But until Sky Sports came along the prime driver of pay-TV takeup in Ireland was access to the BBC and ITV and this was no different as far as MMDS was concerned.

As for MMDS now. If MMDS was not commercially viable UPC would shut it down now. They are under no actual obligation to operate the service and could hand back the licence tommorow if they wanted. The fact that they haven't means that they obviously see some value in retaining it. Shut down of MMDS effectively gifts its customer base to Sky. Not only that, but the Government is already facing a switch-over battle with persauding multichannel refusniks to fork out money to take up Saorview without having to fight a battle over MMDS. It would effectively amount to telling UPC to instruct a significant section of customers to move to its biggest competitor or give up multichannel TV entirely.

If MMDS is to fail so be it. But let the market decide that, its not for the Government to act to accelerate its collapse in my view.

Kensington

True. They're still putting some money into it, for example replacing existing STB equipment with new kit. I'm wondering might UPC re-consider bidding for some commercial DTT multiplexes when they come up on the agenda again in a year or so?

If they went with DVB-T2 and MPEG-4 they could effectively halve their bitrate requirements for similar offerings so either push more content over the same RF space (assuming sufficient commercial muxes come up for auction and they win them) or only take half the number of muxes from RTÉ NL as they currently have on their (UPC's) own sites. Not to mention instant access to RTÉ and the Irish stations in HD with no effort on UPC's behalf.

They could then retire their MMDS network naturally.

noisenotmusic

I'm actually still one of the remaining rural MMDS customers (Limerick ex-Chorus DVB-T region) and to be honest MMDS isn't that bad here. I actually went through the channel listings today and compared it to the cable line up and the only major missing channels were FX, Extreme Sports and a few +1 and music channels. For what we need here it does the job and while I would personally would love to get Sky for the HD & recording capabilites i'm not the one paying for it..

watty

Have you compared MMDS with Freesat + TV aerial?

noisenotmusic

We have an ex-Sky HD box in another room with all the Freesat channels tuned in which covers our HD needs and that TV also has Freeview built in too. That combo really does everything most of the family needs, the only reason we're on a billing provider at all is for Sky Sports & ESPN for the soccer, NFL, UFC etc. Based on a channel line up Freesat actually has more channels (and HD obviously) but we have to keep it going for the sports...

Mike 1972

icdg wrote: »

I'm not sure who actually pushed the licencing of MMDS in Ireland in the first place - it doesn't seem like something the Government would have come up with on its on accord..

I believe it was Cork Communications possibly with lobbying from other cable operators too.

They probably thought they were going to make a killing (at one point TV3 was only going to be carried on cable and MMDS) but it was only ever going to have any hope of making money in areas with no/very poor deflectors or overspill signal. Even then it was doomed once UK terrestrials appeared on satellite.


Cable companies should never have been allowed to "sit on" their franchises. They should have been given five years to roll out their cable networks in ALL franchise areas or have said franchises revoked and readvertised.

Technically it would have been possible to have MMDS across Ireland in the 1960's (whether it would have been economic is another matter) but back in those days the Dept of Posts and Telegraphs had some paranoia about letting other people operate microwave networks. Even RTE werent allowed have their own microwave links for feeding their TX network but had to agree to the P&T operating a network on their behalf and renting it out to them. For a long time the government were also wary about letting too many people have multichannel TV lest it undermine the commercial viability of RTE.

icdg wrote: »

Nor were there official Sky set top boxes in the pre-digital era - you used off-the-shelf equipment).

Most of $kys continental counterparts still use "off the shelf" equipment with bundled CAMS and EPG software.

icdg

Mike 1972 wrote: »

I believe it was Cork Communications possibly with lobbying from other cable operators too.

They probably thought they were going to make a killing (at one point TV3 was only going to be carried on cable and MMDS) but it was only ever going to have any hope of making money in areas with no/very poor deflectors or overspill signal. Even then it was doomed once UK terrestrials appeared on satellite.

s17 Radio and Television Act 1988 clearly envisaged that TV3 would only be carried on cable & MMDS. But s6 Broadcasting Act 1990 amended this so that it could be carried on terrestrial as well. Quite clearly some lobbying was done in between the enactment of the 1988 Act and the 1990 Act.

MMDS got a very good run before UK terrestrials appeared on satellite in Ireland. It is the very limited capacity of the service that has led to its downfall - 11 channels on analogue and the equivilant multiplex capacity on digital. People forget now that all of the UK terrestrials were encrypted when they launched on Sky Digital. Free to air broadcasting came a lot later.

The Cush

icdg wrote: »

MMDS got a very good run before UK terrestrials appeared on satellite in Ireland. It is the very limited capacity of the service that has led to its downfall - 11 channels on analogue and the equivilant multiplex capacity on digital.

Digital MMDS has 4 less channels/multiplexes than analogue, a total of 18. Analogue had 22/23. UPC asked for the 4 analogue channels to be reallocated for digital in 2007, not sure if that happened but the technical regulations were not changed. Comreg in a consultation in 2003 or 2004 suggested reducing the number of multiplexes from 18 to 11.

The Cush

icdg wrote: »

I'm not sure who actually pushed the licencing of MMDS in Ireland in the first place - it doesn't seem like something the Government would have come up with on its on accord.

I remember reading/hearing somewhere(?) that a US or Canadian company pitched the idea to the then Fine Gael/Labour government, maybe with or without the lobbying Irish cable companies. Jim Mitchell was the Minister for Communications at the time.

According to Dáil debates etc. the Minister announced MMDS as an alternative to the deflector systems in a press release in March 1987.

The then Minister Ray Burke publically announced at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis in early 1988 that MMDS was to be introduced.

I remember watching Ray Burke on TV at the time and it sounded very exciting when you lived in pre-internet, pre-SkyTV two channel land. When it became available in the area in the early to mid 90's our house failed the signal test - 2 transmitters in range, Woodcock Hill and Keeper Hill but 2 hills in their LOS. Installed SkyTV instead, Pace MSS500 receiver if I remember correctly.

The Cush

Interview with Dana Strong, chief executive of UPC Ireland in today's Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0819/1224302695180.html

The Cush

UPC customers up but MMDS subscribers continue to fall. At the end of Dec they had 55,000 MMDS subscribers, down 2,200 from the previous quarter and 10,000 for 2011 overall.

UPC grows customer base
CIARA O'BRIEN

Thu, Feb 23, 2012

Communications and home entertainment company UPC Ireland added more than 100,000 new customers in 2011, growing its subscriber base by 13 per cent, the firm said today.

The company, which offers broadband, home phone and digital television services in Ireland, said it had 886,400 subscribers at the end of 2011.

Broadband customers increased by 28 per cent compared with 2010, rising to 255,400, while home phone subscriptions grew by 68 per cent to 162,200.

Almost all of UPC’s broadband customers are on services with speeds of 20MB or higher,

“Consumers are connecting to richer content on multiple devices often simultaneously with others in the same household, and thereby reinforcing the need to have more bandwidth available for faster speed consumption,” UPC said.

Digital TV, meanwhile, grew 1 per cent year on year, adding 5,000 subscriptions to bring the total number to 386,400.

UPC’s business services division, meanwhile, saw revenue rise by 16 per cent as the company made gains in the public sector, acquired international wholesale voice accounts and won over small businesses and home office workers with 100MB broadband.

The company added 90 positions in customer services, sales, administration and managerial roles. UPC employs 845 people directly and supports more than 1,000 jobs via sub contractors.

“[UPC] continues to support business and economic growth while promoting the benefits of digital inclusion in society with highly competitive, superfast internet access and the most innovative and enjoyable entertainment products and services,” said UPC Ireland chief executive Dana Strong.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0223/breaking11.html

watty

Only mention of MMDS:

Its digital TV subscriptions rose by 5 per cent, although its overall base – when analogue and MMDS customers are included – declined. It is also one of the few domestic services companies creating jobs in the recession. On July 23rd, UPC said it would hire an additional 50 staff within weeks and invest a further €80 million in its fibre network. It already employed 900 staff.

However it's almost certain UPC will lose MMDS in 2014 at the latest.

Broadband subscribers though have increased by 28% and you do not need a phone line nor do you need to subscribe to Pay TV.

icdg

We don't drag up old threads.