So how will Etain handle Mr Murdoch?

crawler

According to the Irish Times, Sky Television is strongly resisting attempts by the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) to regulate the company. The company has told telecoms regulator Etain Doyle that her plans to regulate Sky in the Republic under a forthcoming EU package of directives are legally flawed. Citing documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the paper says Sky has warned Doyle that subjecting the company to the same regulation as other broadcast networks "would be both unnecessary and a misapplication of the EU's Communications Package".

spongebob

...of knickers twisting in the wind

if I may mix metaphors. Etain and the High Court are no strangers, most of her operator levy gets spent there it seems.

Etain gets around 30m a year from the levy so all Murdoch has to keep doing is to sue her for 30m a year every year. E will crap herself and then promptly disappear into a mush of humming and hawing with word docs flying around being dotted and comma'd .

We saw how strong E is with NTL who have accepted her 'authority' , Murdochs droids simply told her to feck off, she's looking over the starting gate witing for someone to open it for her.

I would advise her to look at significant market power V universal service obligation and to chase Murdoch on that basis

COPY AND PASTE BRIAN , PLEASE TAKE THE CREDIT

M

pencil

So how will Etain handle Mr Murdoch?

Fondingly with loads of hand lotion!

or

With all the authority of a 5 dollar hooker!

(judging from past experience)

sorry for the crudeness - the truth can be painful.

crawler

SKY want "have cake and eat it"
SKY will get "have cake and eat it"

and that's a banker....

aidan_dunne

Oh come on! Etain doesn't have the power to regulate her bowel movements, let alone try and regulate the all-powerful Murdoch Channel! RM and his bunch of high-powered lawyers will have her for breakfast (or in their case, brunch! ). You may as well give up already, Etain, before you even start because RM will have your arse on a platter faster than you can say, "Let's regulate Sky!"

sax0000

Originally posted by crawler
According to the Irish Times, Sky Television is strongly resisting attempts by the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) to regulate the company. The company has told telecoms regulator Etain Doyle that her plans to regulate Sky in the Republic under a forthcoming EU package of directives are legally flawed. Citing documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the paper says Sky has warned Doyle that subjecting the company to the same regulation as other broadcast networks "would be both unnecessary and a misapplication of the EU's Communications Package".

She / gov.ie could start by stopping RTE from providing content to this company who is seeking to monopolize Irish sporting events, and generally feed a large quantity of low quality, often anti-Irish content to an audience who pay far more for satellite TV than those subscribing to other European digital pay TV services.

Ireland is the only country in Europe without its own digital TV or satellite TV and radio. Tiny countries like Albania and virtually all the ex Yugoslavia states, not to mention Monaco whose population is less than half Co Leitrim have their own satellite TV - which is available all over Europe. Check into any decent hotel anywhere in Europe and you can get your local 20h or 21h news in your room. But not if you are Irish.

Gross incompetence by all concerned. Why are they allowed to continue in office?


sax0000

De Rebel

Originally posted by Muck
...of knickers twisting in the wind

if I may mix metaphors.

love it when u mix u metaphors...........

sceptre

Originally posted by sax0000
She / gov.ie could start by stopping RTE from providing content to this company

She couldn't. And she won't. If she does she'll have many of Sky's 360,000 Irish subscribers up in arms.

She could start by taking any number of positive steps but forcing RTE off the platform isn't something she has the power to do. With regard to the sporting events, that's still within the power of the government and the government exclusively.

often anti-Irish content

Say what?


The cost in Ireland of Sky is pretty much the same as it is in the UK btw. Actually, due to the weakness of the euro, until this year it was less expensive here.

Gross incompetence by all concerned. Why are they allowed to continue in office?

In the case of the government - people voted for them. I didn't - but that doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

In the case of the ODTR - people voted for the government that appointed them.

Moving this to ICDG's satellite forum btw (since this is a telly issue)

Icehouse

On the subject of Ireland naot having 'our own' sat TV - We DO! (Kind of). Esat was set up and given the licence to develop Ireland's satellite service back in the 80's. BSB went into partnership with them and used their transponder space to launch their ill-fated channels. Sky bought the remains, thus Sky indirectly profited from the licensing process here in Ireland, and is (or at least was briefly) our national satellite carrier. Now PAY UP Mr. Murdoch ;op

AM4SP

pork99

anti-Irish content

yes sax0000, wtf is that?

oh yes I forgot the "Lets have a laugh at the Thick Paddies Show" on Sky One presented by Eamon Holmes and sponsored by Eircom, yes that would qualify.

watty

There ought to be a LAW regulating those who would sell susbscription to Foriegn platforms in Ireland.

I can't uplink without a licence. But ANYONE can sell me a subscription to any kind of content uplinked anywhere else.

icdg

Originally posted by Icehouse
On the subject of Ireland naot having 'our own' sat TV - We DO! (Kind of). Esat was set up and given the licence to develop Ireland's satellite service back in the 80's. BSB went into partnership with them and used their transponder space to launch their ill-fated channels. Sky bought the remains, thus Sky indirectly profited from the licensing process here in Ireland, and is (or at least was briefly) our national satellite carrier. Now PAY UP Mr. Murdoch ;op

Actually, Atlantic Satellites (owned I think by James Stafford), was awarded the Irish DBS licences, but went into telecommunications instead and did not develop a service. As for European Satellites - (whereupon the name ESAT, later Esat Telecom, was derived)- that was a short-lived shopping channel devised by Denis O'Brien which I don't believe was even licenced in Ireland. It collapsed rather early on IIRC.

BSB was available in Ireland in its own right - I remember clearly Galaxy and Now's listings were in the Irish Independent. Not sure if squarials were sold here, but on cable it was available. Cablelink did not carry them, but some of what is now Chorus did.

Tony

Squarials were never officially available here but plenty were installed, especially when sky were closing down the service, some pubs got badly stung on this one.

Tony

jmcc

Originally posted by Icehouse
On the subject of Ireland naot having 'our own' sat TV - We DO! (Kind of). Esat was set up and given the licence to develop Ireland's satellite service back in the 80's.

Whoa a blast from the past.

I think that it was also known as Eiresat and E-sat and had some DBS transponder frequencies at the same orbital slot (31W) that BSB operated from. The whole allocation of DBS frequencies was set up by WARC77. It shows how fscked up things can get when civil servants try to figure out the evolution of technology.

The Irish DBS venture was really only aspirational and never had a chance in hell of taking off on a commercial scale. They did a deal with BSB over frequency allocations but BSB was never officially available in the Irish market. The squarial was essentially being replaced by the cheaper 30cm (?) dish towards the end. However ASTRA (Filmnet etc ) and Sky and incompetent management killed BSB.

Murdoch did have a rather bad experience in the Dublin High Court during the 90s but that was to do with piracy. The prospect of legal action would not bother his organisation and it has some very effective political lobbyists here.

Regards...jmcc

Icehouse

Originally posted by icdg
Actually, Atlantic Satellites (owned I think by James Stafford), was awarded the Irish DBS licences, but went into telecommunications instead and did not develop a service. As for European Satellites - (whereupon the name ESAT, later Esat Telecom, was derived)- that was a short-lived shopping channel devised by Denis O'Brien which I don't believe was even licenced in Ireland. It collapsed rather early on IIRC.

BSB was available in Ireland in its own right - I remember clearly Galaxy and Now's listings were in the Irish Independent. Not sure if squarials were sold here, but on cable it was available. Cablelink did not carry them, but some of what is now Chorus did.

I stand by what I said - BSB bought the Irish capacity from from the Irish-licenced consortium which included Esat (I'm not sure about Jim Stafford or Atlantic - I know he went on to be a director of Century (RIP) Radio, and ESAT was not founded to run shopping channels, although they may have dabbled in that market. Denis O'Brien wasn't even involved with Esat at the time AFAIK - he was still at GPA working as Tony Ryan's right hand, and came into Esat in '88 when it was about to fold.... BSB's service was sold by some Irish dealers - our neighbours had it, and at the time, nobody in our neighbourhood had such crystal-clear pictures, even via cable.

watty

I reckon the only way OTDR will get Sky to do anything is as Oftel in UK nicely. Even then Sky only "listens" to Oftel when threatened with very big fines.

Oftel has bizarrely decided that Sky's charge to ITV for conditional access is reasonable but that Sky can't insist on a subscription if doing a "free" box. There is however logic to this when you read the Detail of Oftel.

But can you imagine OTDR telling Sky they can't link free box offer to Subscription?

Or that "free" RTE carriage and thus Irish TV only on Family pack and higher is bad value for Irish State and Licence fee payers?