Doyle: NTL faces loss of licence

sceptre

Etain Doyle has threatened NTL with a revocation of their licence due to the slow rollout of digital TV availability. About time. Get this though: she's threatened to pull only their digital licence as they're compliant with their cable licences. Which may mean that they may have to pull the digital service from people who have it and, given that there's no competitor, just leave people without a digital service at all.

Even heavy-handed (must be a blue moon tonight) she manages to make a flamingo-up of the job:

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/Full_Story/did-sgMirY8TaZNjg.asp

02/10/02
NTL faces loss of licence

By Evelyn Ring
TELECOMS regulator Etain Doyle has threatened to withdraw NTL’s digital licence if it does not explain why its customers are still denied access to a full digital service.


Ms Doyle, who has described the situation as “intolerable”, has called on NTL to produce an adequate explanation by October 15.

“Failure by NTL to provide the necessary clarity by this date will result in my office taking whatever steps are appropriate under the regulations,” she warned.

Sanctions that can be imposed by her office include revoking, suspending or amending the company’s licence or reducing the licence area in which it operates.

Chorus also came under fire from Ms Doyle’s office over a year ago when it attempted to introduce a service charge to customers, a number of whom had been complaining at the time about the quality of the TV signal.

Ms Doyle told the company to withdraw its €3.17 monthly service charge, which would have increased the company’s annual revenue by €9.5 million. Those who refused to pay were faced with a €57.15 charge for each call out. The company, also threatened with having its licence revoked if it did not withdraw the charges, admitted that it did not seek permission to introduce the new charges but did keep Ms Doyle’s office fully informed of its intentions.

NTL's existing agreement stipulated that digital services be provided to more than 100,000 customers in its franchise area by March 31 last. However, the company has only managed to upgrade 36,000 households/businesses to date, mostly in Dublin.

Ms Doyle said she was “very concerned” that NTL MMDS customers in Dublin, Waterford, Galway and west Mayo were still denied access to digital services.

The warning only applies to NTL’s digital licences and not to those for its cable services, which are compliant.

The Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation pointed out that it had been involved in intensive and ongoing discussions with NTL for almost two years about its failure to comply with the terms of the licence.

Ms Doyle gave the NTL an opportunity to review its business plan, which resulted in a decision by the company to sell its MMDS business.

Despite constant reassurances to the director on the proposed sale, commercial negotiations have yet to be completed by the company.

NTL currently has 371,000 customers in its licence areas of Dublin, Waterford, Galway and west Mayo, of which 21,000 have signed up for its digital service launched in September 2001.

A spokesperson for NTL said they would not be making any comment on the matter at this time. “We have until October 15 to explain our situation and we will do it then,” she said.

hunkypex

This is better i supose. It might wake them up. Seems a tad strange that she says this now couldnt she of said it in april?

LFCFan

If I have digital, does that mean that the cable is also capable of being used for Cable Internet access? ie. do I have a 2 way system in place?

corkey

Its the mmds licence not the digital one, They should have put the digital feed on to mmds but they have not due to them trying to sell it , if you get digital that does not mean you are two way i have it since last year and no internet cable yet

LFCFan

....(and I'm taking it with a pinch of salt) that all new developments were supplied with 2 way cableing. I asked why I was not able to avail of the Cable Internet product and they told me it was because they wanted to upgrade all of Dublin, Galway and Waterford first and then offer the product to everyone at the same time.

This seems really daft to me as this would mean thousands of people applying for the service at the same time and there would be all sorts of delays actually getting it in. Whereas if they rolled it out bit by bit they could stay on top of the work load of hooking people up.

icdg

I don't think revocing any licence is necessary.

What the article fails to mention is that the roll out of digital service on cable is mostly compliant (now). 80% of the network now has access to digital.

Revocing the digital licences for cable is not an option, since NTL no longer holds a seperate analogue licence (1974 licence) - this was surrender in 2002. Revoke the digital cable (Ref 99/82) licence and you revoke the analogue licence too. Closing NTL down is not an option, it would leave the best part of the entire city of Dublin without access to any TV (remember, most Dubliners do not possess roof-top aerials and rely on NTL for even RTE).

The licence could be amended to stop DTV distribution, this would be extremely controversial to those already subscribing to the service and would almost certainly lead to these customers defecting to Sky rather than lose DTV altogether. (That would certainly be my own first reaction, anyway). It would mean the ODTR handing Sky a monopoly on digital TV in Dublin, something I'm sure it does not want to do. It could also lead to NTL being placed in a breach of contract with its customers subscibing to the service and lead to numourous lawsuits against it and the ODTR.

Anyway all this is a moot point, having read the original press release I don't believe it is the cable franchises that are under threat, it is the MMDS (Ref 99/81) ones.

Put simply, I have to back NTL again in this. The system has too small a customer base for NTL to develop a whole new DTV platform for it. I'm not sure if the technology (and remember, the NTL Go Digital system is an adapted version of the UK NTL Home Digital Langley system, and was not specifically developed with either the ROI or MMDS in mind) could cheaply and easily adapted for MMDS. NTL is right to sell the franchises, they don't fit in with the rest of the network.

If the franchises cannot be sold soon (to the Windle consortium or whoever), NTL should as a last resort be told to hand the franchises to Chorus - who have a working DMMDS system - for a nominal €1 sum, and be rid of them. If Chorus won't take them, then perhaps shutting down Multilink is perhaps the right step to take.

Either way, cable customers should not be inconvienced by an MMDS-related dispute.

spongebob

Deliver Us!

NTL should as a last resort be told to hand the franchises to Chorus - who have a working DMMDS system - for a nominal €1 sum,

Mindya there may be one slight advantage seeing as everybody knows NTL dont give a toss about their MMDS franchises.

Chorus has a broadband data over MMDS licence as well as a D-MMDS licence and a functioning D-MMDS system.

It sells the Broadband Product under the Powernet Brand in Limerick City for less than DSL prices at a higher speed.

If it had to deploy this in the other NTL MMDS franchise areas as a licencing condition then it may not be a bad idea. NTL has (ISTR) MMDS licences in Galway and Mayo and Dublin City.

Knowing Chorus I would fine them €100,000 Euros a day for every day the thing is delayed beyond a set date in order to focus their tiny little minds.

M

a bientot

Why all this fuss about the extension of 'digital tv'?

Where is the demand for up to 100 English language channels in households with about four or five residents with one television set between them?

Why is Etain Doyle so keen to ensure that ntl and Chorus make money for their U.S. based shareholders?

Most people don't even watch the - much diminished - fourteen (basic) channels...and ntl only have 3000 so called digital customers that all cableviewers have been forced to subsidise since last October....and another 300 subscribers to films and sports channels.

If people were interested then only dogs and cats would be on our streets at night and we'd have no crime including deathdriving etc.

Sorry ntl (and Madam Doyle) you are NOT succeeding in providing a public service to the nation's citizens law-abiding or otherwise.....and you are not going to achieve your objective of improving people's knowledge of the English language as a result of watching such programmes as Dallas or Kojak up to ten times on ten different channels.
And all this is at the expense of the terrestrials including our own RTE, TG4 and TV3................

Absolute crazy madness to force us all to take up to 500 radio and tv channels.............

LFCFan

in the eyes of the government is to do away with analogue altogether thus freeing up space on the airwaves. Or am I talking ****e again?

John R

Yes, that is the basic idea. But just like the 3rd gen Mobile frequencies they have cocked it up and have missed the bandwagon.

sceptre

Originally posted by a bientot
And all this is at the expense of the terrestrials including our own RTE, TG4 and TV3................

Absolute crazy madness to force us all to take up to 500 radio and tv channels.............

Ah but you're *not* forced to take them. People want the service. Some people don't - if people want to remain with four channels that's entirely their right.

I watch quite a few of the channels available on satellite. Some I don't watch - like the shopping channels. However I don't pay for these, meanwhile the fact that they're there doesn't affect my life in any way.

There's a sizable demand in my place for 100 english speaking channels - and I've only one TV between myself and my imaginery flatmate.

With regard to advertising revenue (which I assume is what you're referring to) being diminished for RTE/TG4 and the independent TV3 as a result of these channels being available in the Irish market, is there a real problem with that from a viewer point of view while choice does increase? I'm sure I'm not alone in cringing as RTE start showing Keeping Up Appearances for a third full run. The EU Television Without Frontiers directive would put pay to the "no-one wants it so you can't have it" argument in any case - especially given that people do want it. If RTE had a multichannel service comparable to that provided by Sky I'd happily switch to it. They don't and they won't.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by icdg
The licence could be amended to stop DTV distribution, this would be extremely controversial to those already subscribing to the service and would almost certainly lead to these customers defecting to Sky rather than lose DTV altogether. (That would certainly be my own first reaction, anyway).

It would also be considered highly irrational since the whole purpose of the licence obligations is to have digital TV available to the public over cable and MMDS. To then prevent this from happening would be very hard to justify.