UPC/Virgin Media's new "Connect Box" high-speed modem

The Cush wrote: »

Westward Cables Ltd - Cable Licence issued 25 May 1983
In 1991, a Westward Cables company, MDS Ltd., trading as Horizon TV Distribution Ltd. was granted 3 MMDS licences for Limerick, Clare and Kerry and 4 MMDS licences for the Midlands.

In 1992 Westward Cables was acquired by Princes Holdings Ltd.*, Independent Wireless Cable Ltd.** (a Princes Holdings subsidiary) previously held a minority share in the company. They traded as Westward Multichannel/Horizon Multichannel. The other cable/MMDS brands within Princes Holdings were Cork Multichannel and East Coast Multichannel**.

The generic Irish Multichannel branding was adopted circa 1996 and by 1998 they all called themselves Irish Multichannel. Irish Multichannel were then joined by Suir Nore Relays and CMI Cable and the three were rebranded Chorus in 2000.

**Independent Wireless Cable (an Irish Independent company) were originally awarded 7 MMDS licences as East Coast Multichannel in 1989. (They also held minority shareholdings in Cork Communications and Westward Cables when they were awarded 4 and 7 MMDS licences respectively)

*In 1992 Princes Holdings was formed as a 50:50 joint venture between Independent Newspapers (Independent Wireless Cable Ltd) and US Telecommunications companies UIH and TCI.
In 1998 TCI bought out UIH's share of Princes Holdings.

Liberty Global who evolved out of TCI/UCG went on to buyout UIH/Philips company United Philips Cable (UPC) (later Pan-Europe Communications). Independent Newspapers sold it shares in Princes Holdings to Liberty in 2004.

The rest is history.