This week the Broadcasting Authority (BAI) announced their contract negotiations with all three potential operators of digital terrestrial television (DTT) have now failed.
The process started over two years ago with the award of the licence in principal to Boxer, the combined Denis O’Brien Communicorp and Swedish Boxer group. After a year they withdrew from the process citing the economy and breakdown of negotiations with RTÉ as reasons.
The licence was then offered to the runners-up, OneVision, the Eircom/TV3 consortium. After another year they too withdrew also citing breakdown of negotiations …

Boxer’s withdrawal from DTT in Ireland hasn’t exactly been met with tears.The current and anticipated economic climate were reasons cited for Boxer pulling out of DTT but the real killer was a request from RTÉ for a €20m bond to operate the digital transmission network.
Within the industry the general feeling here is that neither the economic climate nor transmission fees are the problem but a realisation that a terrestrial pay TV option just will not work. I tend to agree for three strong reasons;
Firstly Ireland already enjoys over 75% digital …

The public presentations by candidates for Ireland’s DTT Multiplex Licence’s were held today at the Westbury Hotel, Dublin. The ladies above were not present, I just loved this picture from Flickr!
On with the synopsis starting with what all have in common;
All will use the RTÉ NL transmission system so coverage predictions were all similar 60%+ in 2009 to 90%+ in 2012 as were investment figures of approx €120m.
All made play on how “Irish” they were!
All will have small free offering but mainly subscriber based.
All have large marketing budgets for launch.
All …

Just reading an interesting note on DigitalSpy about DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) in France.
The article makes comparative mention of the sales of DTT Freeview boxes in the UK and notes that since October 2002 27m Freeview boxes have been sold there. 27m – that’s a lot. Well after all it is TV and TV always bags the spotlight. That’s why Freeview in the UK is such a stellar success.
However, before we run away with ourselves, here is an interesting note of my own. In roughly the same period, the DAB …