BAI may advertise for commercial DTT in 2013

The Cush

In a Sunday Business Post article by Samantha McCaughren today BAI chief executive Michael O'Keeffe said "there was a possibility of advertising for a commercial operator for the digitial terrestrial television (DTT) platform, due to the success of Saorview".

Other issues on the agenda for the BAI include Digitial Terrestrial Television (DTT), and it will possibly once again seek a commercial player for the platform. The success of Saorview might attract new interest.

Sam Russell

The Cush wrote: »

In a Sunday Business Post article by Samantha McCaughren today BAI chief executive Michael O'Keeffe said "there was a possibility of advertising for a commercial operator for the digitial terrestrial television (DTT) platform, due to the success of Saorview".

By success, does he mean TV3 are now paying for transmission?

The Cush

Sam Russell wrote: »

By success, does he mean TV3 are now paying for transmission?

That would be the assumption from 2 Dáil replies just prior to the launch of Saorview in May 2011.

The Cush

The BAI has tendered for consultants in relation to the licensing of the commercial DTT muxes, tender published on April 17th.

Short description
BAI DTT Consultancy 2013

Detailed description
Contract for the provision of consultancy services on the licensing of digital terrestrial television (DTT) multiplexes to be operated on a commercial basis

Response deadline
03-05-2013 12:00

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=64785&B=&PS=1&PP=ctm/Supplier/publictenders

watty

Waste of money. These people are looking as incompetent as Comreg.

Kristopherus

watty wrote: »

Waste of money. These people are looking as incompetent as Comreg.

Absolutely.

Will they ever let this go? Did they learn a thing from ON/ITV Digital?

Sam Russell

Perhaps they know something we do not. Perhaps they 'beleive in better'.

mike65

and who the hell is going to be on these MUX? Denis O'Brien Telly?

FREETV

watty wrote: »

Waste of money. These people are looking as incompetent as Comreg.

It should be good for a laugh again though to see the whole process go belly up. They are clueless. They are as bad as the Tax pushers which we have in government at the moment.

FREETV

mike65 wrote: »

and who the hell is going to be on these MUX? Denis O'Brien Telly?

Sky muck????

Mike 1972

mike65 wrote: »

and who the hell is going to be on these MUX? Denis O'Brien Telly?

BBC ITV etc ?

Yup I know there are on freesat but there are people who dont want the complication of multiple EPGs/ boxes/ remotes then theres people afflicted with dishphobia (their own or others) or living in bedsits or apartments which face northwards.

Debatable if such people exist in sufficent numbers to make a service viable although UPC seem to do ok ?

mike65

Wouldn't there be all sorts of tangled rights issues?

Sam Russell

Only Sky would have an interest. Did they not try the Pinic route in the UK but got turned down?

ftakeith

Sam Russell wrote: »

Only Sky would have an interest. Did they not try the Pinic route in the UK but got turned down?

sky ireland could try the following for people not interested in a 12 months contract:

sky entertainment package for €15
sky one
sky atlantic
sky arts 1
sky arts 2
sky living
sky living IT
sky news
sky sports news

sky special package for extra €25
sky movies premiere
sky sports 1
sky sports 2
sky sports 3
sky sports 4

watty

Sky would not have an interest. It cost them the same to supply HD Sky box with more chance to make money.

watty

Mike 1972 wrote: »

BBC ITV etc ?

Not economically viable.

Mike 1972

mike65 wrote: »

Wouldn't there be all sorts of tangled rights issues?

no moreso than for UPC/Sky/The RTE relays in NI surely ?

The Cush

With less than 3 years remaning to the end of UPC's MMDS licences and a declining MMDS customer base maybe they'll consider another look at commercial DTT - a UPC "lite DTT" service. A potential 200-250,000 DTT only households.

Back in 2008 they together with RTÉ (Easy TV consortium) submitted a bid to operate the commercial muxes but declined when offered the licences at the end of the process.

Sam Russell

The Cush wrote: »

With less than 3 years remaning to the end of UPC's MMDS licences and a declining MMDS customer base maybe they'll consider another look at commercial DTT - a UPC "lite DTT" service. A potential 200-250,000 DTT only households.

Back in 2008 they together with RTÉ (Easy TV consortium) submitted a bid to operate the commercial muxes but declined when offered the licences at the end of the process.

They declined because two years had passed and the project had gone off the boil. If the RTE/UPC consortium had got the gig in the first place, they would have gone ahead with it as agreement on transmission would not have been an issue.

watty

No, it would never have launched or if Launched would have gone bust.

People apply and even get licences all the time and never use them.

DTT or MMDS without a quality 2 way Broadband makes no sense foir UPC. With the sell off of 800MHz spectrum and proposed sell off of 700MHz spectrum, HD, 3D, 4K / UHD etc enhanced services and FTA Satellite, DTT Pay TV is dead in the water.

Pay TV is already at 82%, way past saturation. There are maybe at best 20,000 to 45,000 people you could entice to DTT Pay TV. The cost per customer would be VERY high. For a tenth of the money UPC could get 60,000 to 100,000 customers via Satellite. UPC do Satellite in other countries. Now that UPC has bought Virgin Cable in UK they may do a Rural UK/Ireland services when more capacity is available at 28.2E as then the additional transmission cost for Ireland would be ZERO!

channelsurfer2

who would bother? wasnt it rumored to be costing around 10million a year just for running costs and spectrum fees alone? with eircom(and possibly vodafone) going to provide tv via fibre to the cabinet in the coming months I cant see any market for it.

The Cush

The Cush wrote: »

The BAI has tendered for consultants in relation to the licensing of the commercial DTT muxes, tender published on April 17th.

RFT document from the etenders website - https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=64785&B=&PS=1&PP=ctm/Supplier/publictenders

Trick of the Tail

I'll do the consultation for them. In fact I'll do it now:

Forget it, it's not worth it. No market anymore cos you dragged your feet for years - everyone that wants multi-channel has it already from a better platform, like Sky or UPC.

Broadcasters won't pay to be on it, advertisers won't advertise.

My invoice is in the post.

The Cush

The Cush wrote: »

The BAI has tendered for consultants in relation to the licensing of the commercial DTT muxes, tender published on April 17th.

Irish Times article on this today (Business Today, p.14) - BAI looks to revive commercial digital TV service

P.lane78

As discussed on another thread , Setanta with the present BT sport offerings would be very attractive to a big cohort of people using Saorview.

The Cush

According to the BAI tender document attached above the consultants report into the future of commercial DTT was to be discussed at the BAI meeting of Sept 2nd.

It is proposed to bring the review report to the Authority for consideration at its meeting on September 2nd, 2013.

Irish Times 17th Aug

London-based consultants Oliver & Ohlbaum have been retained by the BAI to report back by the end of this month. The authority confirmed the report would be discussed by its board at a meeting in September.

No press release or anything in the newspapers on it yet.

The Cush

Piece in the Sunday Times today on the report into the future of commercial DTT here.

The consultants Oliver & Ohlbaum have recommended in the report to the BAI that they should abandon plans to find a commercial partner for Saorview.

The article states in the report that the future of Saorview is not assured and its core base is switching to Sky and UPC with 600,000 "subscribers" using it but just 169,000 using it as their only digital service.

The consultants advised that a clear roadmap has to be drawn up for the future development of Saorview and that TV3 as the only commercial group on the service needs to be given a "strong voice" on Saorview.

mike65

Saorview HAS to have a future, surely the Irish national broadcaster (RTE) must be available free of subscription and readily to all.

Sam Russell

The Cush wrote: »

Piece in the Sunday Times today on the report into the future of commercial DTT here.

The consultants Oliver & Ohlbaum have recommended in the report to the BAI that they should abandon plans to find a commercial partner for Saorview.

The article states in the report that the future of Saorview is not assured and its core base is switching to Sky and UPC with 600,000 "subscribers" using it but just 169,000 using it as their only digital service.

The consultants advised that a clear roadmap has to be drawn up for the future development of Saorview and that TV3 as the only commercial group on the service needs to be given a "strong voice" on Saorview.

I thought that they already have a strong voice. The absence of advertising on RTE NN and the absence of RTE 3/plus is testament to that. The fact that TV3 in the analogue time refused to pay for adequate transmissin of its signal, leaving large swathes of rural Ireland with no signal, contrary to their licence. The continued of the parking of their €81 million debt to the state, and news of the sale of that debt at an undisclosed discount to TV3's owner is further proof (if it was needed) that TV3 is indeed the favoured child of the BAI.

Is it any surprise that a consultant, paid for by the BAI, should further BAI preferences. By the way, is Ray Burke a member of the BAI?

jmcc

Does that O'Keefe chap have any background or expertise in Pay TV? I can't see how he gets from a near-compulsory switchover being a "success" to the same service being a prospect for Pay TV.

Regards...jmcc

channelsurfer2

i wonder if the consultants actually are on the same planet as those who are using saorview. of course it has a future and to say that tv3 should be given a free ride on it more or less is nonsense. tv3 may not even be around in 2016 if utv do make a success of their new station. they should be actually reporting that yes it has a future and utv not tv3 will provide help by paying for transmission costs unlike tv3 who wont..

watty

TV3 has too strong a voice.

BAI should forget about a Terrestrial Pay TV platform.

Saorview is a successful replacement of Terrestrial Analogue. When there was no "Digital terrestrial"/Saorview the Pay TV was in 80% + of households.

Pay TV is super saturated as 55% is a normal saturation point.

Saorview & PayTV are separate and unrelated. TV3 should have no stronger (and should be better regulated) voice than anyone else on Saorview.

Is there ANY evidence that people are Switching to Pay TV and ditching Terrestrial Completely? In fact is it not the reverse?

In any case from a Public Service and Security viewpoint Saorview has to be maintained even if only 5% use it. But of course the real agenda of Comreg is to abolish ALL Terrestrial Broadcast.

Perhaps all BAI's attempts to get a "Pay TV" partner are cynical window dressing to help prove the "failure" of Terrestrial in General? They can't be so stupid that they can't see that any Terrestrial Pay TV partner other than Sky or UPC would go bust. Neither of them will use a more expensive platform with less spectrum.

There might have been some hope for Digital Terrestrial pay TV if there had been no reduction of TV spectrum (so called Digital Dividend) and MMDS bundled in. But even then the numbers don't work to make a profit ever. Neither of those was going to happen.

whitebriar

It's been a long time since anyone with power in government here if ever have had a clue about broadcasting.
Couple that with justifying jobs by commissioning reports and cow tau'ing to vested interests etc and we have tv in Ireland that's disjointed and overpriced.

The market is simple here,it's just ruined by people who have power not knowing what they are at.

Oh and as usual on this topic,regarding what watty said above, he's said it many times as have all of you about the market as it is now.Nail on the head.

It's not too late to change things of course back to a leveled playing pitch,it never is but it would require a huge new Eu\Uk\RoI policy intervention and I am afraid that's not going to happen.
We are where we are.
Pity more money is being wasted investigating uneconomic solutions in the delusion that they might work though but C'est la Irlande.

jmcc

watty wrote: »

BAI should forget about a Terrestrial Pay TV platform.

There was an opportunity for Terrestrial Pay TV, Watty, but it was about fifteen years ago. The problem is that the BAI seems utterly disconnected from technological developments.

Is there ANY evidence that people are Switching to Pay TV and ditching Terrestrial Completely? In fact is it not the reverse?

One of the biggest motivators for the PayTV > FTA switch (typically Saorview and a satellite tv based Freeview (Freesat) combination) is that much of what people want to watch is now available on the web. Services like Netflix really upset the standard Pay TV model. UPC seems to have seen this split coming and though its On Demand service is a bit sparse, it has cut the video rental shops out of the chain by offering both internet connectivity and VOD movie rentals. Eircom is even playing catchup.

Perhaps all BAI's attempts to get a "Pay TV" partner are cynical window dressing to help prove the "failure" of Terrestrial in General? They can't be so stupid that they can't see that any Terrestrial Pay TV partner other than Sky or UPC would go bust. Neither of them will use a more expensive platform with less spectrum.

The more important question is whether anyone in BAI has much of a clue about Pay TV and the critical mass of subscribers needed to make a service a success. It is probably a just a case of buzzword bingo.

But even then the numbers don't work to make a profit ever. Neither of those was going to happen.

Yep but the BAI seems to be ignorant of how the whole TV delivery model has been changing over the last few years and the brutal economics of Pay TV are unknown to them.

Regards...jmcc

channelsurfer2

there is always room for terresterial tv. There will always be a core of 100-150k with nothing else and the BAI like any State Quango will keep on commissioning reports to justify its existence and try and scare the relevant Minister into providing funding to developing it further while keeping all the vested interests like TV3 and SKy happy. The report isnt published on the BAI website yet so it will be interesting to read when it is. The only real people actually trying to boost Saorview are RTE who are hamstrung by the BAI and Minister in in the first place by having to prove that anything they do will not impact on TV3 or SKY who dont give a dam about Saorview.

Trick of the Tail

That's exactly it. The BAI prevaricated over pay tv for years, and with each year, the potential customer base for such a service went off and got it elsewhere, from Sky or UPC.

At least they were given good advice from those consultants - i.e. forget about it.

I dread to think how much that advice cost however - I would have given it to them for half the price!

Saorview is a perfectly good replacement for analogue terrestrial tv; however one should really wonder whether it was worth the huge investment in putting DTV on air, when most people get their tv from another source anyway.

formerly scottish paddy

I have to laugh at the BAI "determining the future" of Saorview. Who paid for it and built it in the first place? Without RTE having risen to the challenge and built a DTT network in an incredibly short time, this country would not have been able to meet it's international commitments to end analogue TV transmissions. Many years were wasted in this transition, as everyone knows on this forum, by waiting for the BAI to come up with some DTT pay-tv system that might work. This despite having seen the fiasco in the UK with ITV/ON Digital, where in the end (like here) it fell back on the national PSB, the BBC to develop a system suitable for DSO. The Saorview/Freesat option is the only non-pay TV choice most people have in this country and without them we would all be forced to pay large sums of money to foreign companies even to see our own channels.
The BAI are only trying to justify their own existence. Do we really need them? and how much would it save getting rid of them? :mad:

jmcc

formerly scottish paddy wrote: »

I have to laugh at the BAI "determining the future" of Saorview. Who paid for it and built it in the first place? Without RTE having risen to the challenge and built a DTT network in an incredibly short time, this country would not have been able to meet it's international commitments to end analogue TV transmissions.

The sad thing was that RTE was talking about developing a DTT system with its own internet system many years ago but the idiots in successive governments screwed the whole thing up.

Regards...jmcc

ftakeith

commerical saorview just needs to be adds ons tv services like youview in the uk

the 8 fta channels and utv ireland, with adds on tv services from sky, eircom etc, there are 150,000 saorview homes with half of those homes might be interested in a bit of pay tv in saorview land

watty

jmcc wrote: »

The sad thing was that RTE was talking about developing a DTT system with its own internet system many years ago but the idiots in successive governments screwed the whole thing up.

Regards...jmcc

No. That was mis-reporting. I am totally conversant with it. The reverse channel is shared between EVERYONE on the same TV mast.

So if we take say 10,000 people "online" out of maybe 200,000 using Woodcock hill:

8MHz Return channel: Max data rate to allow max 1W* from subscriber and edge of coverage (not Fringe), maybe 10Mbps. Roughtly.

10M / 10K = 1K, i.e. about 1200bps (Viewdata was 75 bps). So really good "interactive".

But Where would Downlink for Internet be? If we took a 3rd TV channel 8MHz and dedicated it to Data, we maybe get 40Mbps after FEC (Shared between EVERYONE, so maybe 5kbps!). There was no such plan actually. Any per user downlink would have been VERY slow multiplexed into TV data, like the Broadcast Subtitles, Interactive and Teletext.

At ISDN speed (64k) that's 625 simultaneous users. Or at Mobile Phone speeds, 6 users.

But the Mast is for over 200,000 people! It's not a sectored short range cell based system like Mobile.

The name of the system is DVB-RCT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-RCT

The 3G system and even EDGE on 2G made it obsolete. The only thing EVER possible was the idea of voting or purchasing something on Teletext or Interactive page Advert.

Browsing the internet only possible as a demo for maybe up to 20 people in an entire town or city. Not viable ever in real life. It's TV was either stupid or lying in their financial prospectus about making money from Internet Subs. some RTE-NL people that saw the Israeli demos didn't appreciate that it wasn't scaleable at all.

My training is as a Communications Engineer in both Broadcast and Data systems. The numbers can't ever ever work for DVB-RCT. The number of people served by each transmitter mast is too high.

Years ago Chorus and NTL had Internet and TV on same cable. They used DOCSIS rather than DVB-RCC which never caught on. The Cable Labs DOCSIS is a similar idea though. The Data downlink is MPEG-2TS DVB-S. But Cable has 5MHz to 65MHz for uplink (60MHz not 8) and 110MHz to 868MHz shared between Digital TV, Analogue TV and Data. Cable Used to be slow because the same cable was shared to too many people (but FAR less than a Transmitter mast and with far far more bandwidth, also Cable is less noisy so can send more data down 8MHz than a TV aerial). UPC started cutting up the Chorus & NTL cables and feeding each part separately. So Speed went up. Then they added fibre fed cabinets per street and could take speeds then to 100Mbps as far fewer people shared the cable. Also closing many Analogue channels and using Digital TV means more space for Modems.

The sole company promoting DVB-RCT abandoned it as there was not a single sale. The extra cost not worth it to allow TV voting without a phone line. They put their expertise into WiMax (Now no longer a viable Mobile Solution, but Fixed Wireless Broadband only, many early Mobile WiMax deployments have switched to LTE).


RTE did no development of DVB-RCT, but the 1999 Field Trials on VHF & UHF did use DVB-RCT for interactive. Back then they also backed the other dying horse, MHP. The MHP has been closed by many early adopters. The CI+ specifies MHEG5. MHEG5 deployments have grown and MHP has shrunk (both are Broadcast mainly replacements for Teletext and both can use Internet as a return or personal Interactive channel, so BBC iPlayer on a Smart TV can deliver via Broadband, but GUI wrapper is MHEG5 not HTML.)

However it would have been nice to be the only Country in the world with genuine Interactive DVB-T (albiet really slow!) in 2000. But then we today would have MHP (which is dead), UK TVs even less compatible. And the UK dual MPEG2 & MPEG4 simulcast.

One advantage of being late to the Digital TV party is we got the UK (and many other places MHEG5) Interactive and MPEG4 only, cutting SD transmission cost in 1/2 and ensuring no wasteful SD & HD simulcasting. ALL approved Set boxes MUST downconvert and include SCART as well as having HDMI. Try finding a Blueray Player for SD TV and then updating TV later!

(* Allegedly the DVB-RCT spec is 0.5W which would be slower, but I know Comreg allows 1W for such stuff.)

The Cush

The Cush wrote: »

The BAI has tendered for consultants in relation to the licensing of the commercial DTT muxes, tender published on April 17th.

Final report published today, thanks to Elmo for the link

After careful consideration of the issues involved, the Authority has decided not to proceed with a licensing process for commercial DTT at this time and has communicated this decision to the Minister for Communications Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte TD.

http://www.bai.ie/?p=4236
http://www.bai.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/20131204_OOCommDTTRpt_v.Final_MT.pdf

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0107/496388-bai-digital-tv/

Trick of the Tail

I could have told them that for nothing.

Elmo

totally confused should this not be in broadcasting?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057119065

Elmo

Trick of the Tail wrote: »

I could have told them that for nothing.

Think we all could have, and I think at some stage we did on boards. The just like wasting money on consultants.

The Cush

Elmo wrote: »

totally confused should this not be in broadcasting?

Doesn't it specifically relate to commercial digital terrestrial television and the awarding of the 4 commercial DTT muxes by the BAI to a multiplex operator as per the Broadcasting Act.

icdg

Terrestrial is the place for this.

Really the BAI should now accept pay-DTT is dead for good, and look at strengthening Saorview which (and I know its primary purpose is to replace analogue terrestrial) is one of the weakest DTT services in Europe in terms of channel line up, there is a graph in the report showing how small Saorview's line up is compared to other countries. RTÉ/2RN and the BAI should be taking an "open arms" approach in respect of any third party free to air channels which would like to join Saorview - this "Irish passport holders only" attitude they seem to have towards the platform is at best in contravention of EU law and at worst is actively hurting Saorview. We're unlikely to see the BBC appear due to it not being able to spend licence fee payers money on doing so, but if UTV and Channel 4 want carriage (and UTV mostly likely will once their separate ROI service comes on stream) I see no reason to deny them particularly if Mux 2 is lying half empty.

STB

.... which bring up the question. How did 3e ever get on the platform.

The other stations on the Mux are either PSBs or a commercial station with certain PSB broadcast output requirements per their terrestrial licences. AFAIK even advertising minutage is limited by licence.

It mights be said to simply let a station on the PSB muxes that is licensed outside the state without any of those requirments onto a purpose built Irish Platform might just cheese off the current incumbents. Perhaps it would be akin to licensing a 24 hour wall to wall music radio station during the 80s.

Saorview the platform is owned and run by 2RN which is wholly owned by RTE, the PSB, unlike Freeview which is a joint venture in the UK, among the broadcasters.

The Cush wrote: »

Doesn't it specifically relate to commercial digital terrestrial television and the awarding of the 4 commercial DTT muxes by the BAI to a multiplex operator as per the Broadcasting Act.

I would hope so. Giving a content licence outside of that to a station outside of the state simply to lower the tx costs of the commercial station might be seen as a retrograde step. Commercial DTT was never a runner. They should have known this. Cable TV and Freesat infiltration in Ireland didnt happen overnight.

MarkK

icdg wrote: »

RTÉ/2RN and the BAI should be taking an "open arms" approach in respect of any third party free to air channels which would like to join Saorview - this "Irish passport holders only" attitude they seem to have towards the platform is at best in contravention of EU law and at worst is actively hurting Saorview.

Why do you think they have an "Irish passport holders only" attitude?
Did someone apply to go on Saorview and were denied access?

galtee boy

If Saorview added TV3 and TG4 in HD, maybe even RTE News Now in HD, and presumably UTV ROI will be in HD when it launches, it wouldn't be a bad DTT service, more channels will come over the coming years, bear in mind, it's broadcasting to only 4m people approx, the size of Greater Manchester !

The Cush

STB wrote: »

.... which bring up the question. How did 3e ever get on the platform.

The other stations on the Mux are either PSBs or a commercial station with certain PSB broadcast output requirements per their terrestrial licences. AFAIK even advertising minutage is limited by licence.

3e broadcasts under TV3's licence

3e

The Commission also approved a proposal from TV3 that the licensing status of the 3e service be amended. The service will now be licensed under Section 34, rather than Sections 36 and 41, of the Broadcasting Act 2001. 3e will no longer have a separate contract with the Commission but will be covered by the main terms and conditions of the existing TV3 contract.

BCI Press Release - 28.7.2009