Please improve this article if you can. (August 2008)
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The deployment of digital terrestrial television in Republic of Ireland has taken some time with the first small tests being carried out in 1998, the cancelling/or non award of in 2003 of the DTT pay license and further trials in August 2006 . During 2008 BCI announced that three groups had come together with proposals to manage DTT in the Republic of Ireland. On July 21, 2008 Boxer DTT Ltd was awarded by the BCI to operate the Republic of Ireland's national DTT service. The service was provisionally to be roll out from January 2009, but there are reports that it will defer commercial pay DTT launch until September 2009 to co-ordinate Free-to-air and pay DTT launch, with extension of geographical coverage from 75% to 93%(Boxer)/98% (RTÉ Mux) by 2013[1][2][3]. A public DTT Information Campaign in March 2009 was suggested by the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Ireland on July 31st 2008 at the end of the 2 year Dublin Louth DTT trial.[1]
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DVB-T has repeatedly been tested from RTÉ Network Limited's Three Rock Mountain transmitter, with relatively long tests in 1998 and 2001, and shorter tests in 2004, with a single multiplex carrying the four Irish analogue terrestrial channels, and Tara Television while it was in existence, on both UHF (channel 26) and VHF (channel D). These were under temporary licences for testing, which are regularly awarded.
A contract to run a nationwide system, with six multiplexes from main sites, and four from relay sites was awarded in 2001 to ITS Digital Limited, trading as "It's TV", who intended to launch a pay TV and broadband service.
ITS wanted to offer broadband internet access using the DVB-RCT standard (which while high bandwidth at up to 30 Mb/s, is not fast enough with 20,000 people on one mast). They had no broadband licence and no viable business plan without selling broadband, and due to lack of funding, the licence was revoked.
Boxer DTT Ltd trading as Boxer were announced as the sole winner to operate the DTT service in the Republic of Ireland[4]The announcement was made by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) on July 21, 2008[5]. The award of the contracts is subject to clarifications and the successful outcome of contract negotiations, which will take place in the coming months. Boxer will now launch in September 2009 with access nationwide to be completed before or by 2013. Boxer DTT Ltd is a consortium made up of Communicorp, Boxer TV Access in Sweden and BT Ireland[3].
Nine groups applied to run content on the DTT trials as well as potentially run the network in the future. Seven of these were successful:
BT Ireland and TVONE also applied but were not successful.
The current DTT system begun initial building phase in 2006 under a Department of Communications trial facilitated by RTÉ Networks at Three Rock, Dublin & Louth's Claremont Carn transmitters [2].RTÉ indicate they will now run this multiplex for its National services and the Department of Communications trial concludes on July 31st 2008.[3]
Following awarding of A, B and C BCI Multiplex licenses by the BCI on July 21st 2008 [4] digital aerial TV (known in the industry as Digital Terrestrial TV) is expected to launch proper sometime in late autumn to most of the Ireland in 2009 with progressive rollout until 2013 Q1. Statutory Instrument 198 has now been issued to ComReg by the Minister for Communications, Energy and National resources with ComReg DTT license regulations coming into effect for any contracts signed from June 18th 2008. [5]
The digital TV switchover date for the Republic of Ireland is expected to be September 30th 2012 coinciding with the UK switchover date for Northern Ireland. [6] The switch will be officially determined in the Broadcasting Bill 2008 which is currently in draft form in the Houses of the Oireachtas currently [7]. When enacted, it will also establish the Oireachtas TV channel and the Irish Film Channel as public service broadcasters; and will give the BCI a new role as the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland over both PSBs and commercial broadcasters with new powers of financial fines.
Analogue radio is not included in the broadcasting bill though a trial Digital Audio Broadcasting radio platform is being rolled out by RTÉ. Also broadcast network mobile TV may be licensed in the future under ComReg's existing powers.[6] The RTÉ NL network will be capable of providing a DVB-H backbone to mobile network operators in addition to DAB on a national basis [8].
Permanent spectrum licences were issued in December 2007 by ComReg to RTÉ NL and the BCI to commence in 2008 in line with the provision of the Broadcasting (Amendment) Act 2007[7] with RTÉ being assigned one multiplex and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland being assigned the other three pre-2012 and one each thereafter.[9]
The BCI launched the commercial multiplex processes with a minimum of twenty-four channels specified. Interested parties submitted their applications as specified in ads in National Papers on Friday March 7th 2008.[10]
The BCI’s application process for the DTT multiplex contracts ran for a period of eight weeks, with a closing date of 12 noon on Friday May 2nd according to the BCI website. The application document sought a considerable amount of information including: proposals for programming; financial and business plan; the transmission/multiplexing proposals as well as details regarding the shareholding and management of the applicant group.
9 Applicants consisting of 3 bid consortiums for all 3 muxes made presentations to the Commission, which was open to the public at 1:30pm in the Westbury Hotel, Grafton Street, Dublin 2 on the 12 May 2008 and the award of contract was offered to the most suitable bid team shortly after July 21, 2008 following evaluation by the BCI on the applications received. [8]
The technical requirements for consumers to be check upon purchase of DTV sets can be viewed at [9]. Some commentators have voiced concerns that HD Ready Digital TVs sold currently by some retailers are not MPEG4 compatible, a due to the adoption of the older MPEG2 in the UK Freeview system. [11]
RTÉ begins retransmitting Irish channels in MPEG4 on August 4th 2008 in continued RTÉ testing. Other trial channels (UK channels) that were scrambled during the trial, receivable by trialists will be no longer available following the ending of the 2 year trial on July 31st. Downtime of no channels receivable can be expected for those with MPEG4 set top boxes between August 1st to August 3rd so rescanning may be required on August 4th due to multiplex changes when transmission resumes.[12]. MPEG2 channel transmissions will cease on July 31st. MPEG2 only TVs or boxes will no longer pick up the Irish channels after that date in Dublin & Louth. Consumers are thus advised to check and return equipment not MPEG4 compatible as MPEG4 is the standard chosen by RTÉ and the BCI.[13],[14] EPG information is currently provided for approximately one week ahead on most channels.
The Green Party/Comhaontas Glas have, as part of their 2007 General Election Manifesto, proposed an all-island free-to-air DTT system, consisting of RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3, TG4, BBC One Northern Ireland, BBC Two Northern Ireland, UTV and Channel 4 to be broadcast all around the island on the one network. Other Irish channels (eg. Channel 6, City Channel) may also be included. The party wish for this to be complete by 2009, three years before analogue signals are due to be switched off in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.[10]
All channels are encoded in MPEG4.[11]
On July 21, 2008 Boxer DTT Ltd was awarded a licence in principle by the BCI to operate the Republic of Ireland's commercial national DTT service. .Boxer say their service should start in January 2009 with rollout completed by 2013 .[1].
The multiplexes are likely to be recommissioned after July 31st 2008 by RTÉ NL in consort with Boxer DTT Ltd. They will operate multiplex 2, 3 and 4 and RTÉ will operate Mux 1.
Net Insight, a Swedish company have won the infrastructure contract in November 2007 with delivery in Q2 2008 of the solution [15].Their solution enables RTÉ NL to provide infrastructure for its DAB platform and to provide DVB-H backbone coverage to telecoms providers mobile TV (transmission network/not 3G based to compliment telecom mast cell infrastructure DVB-H). It also enables RTÉ NL to move to Single Frequency Networks that are more spectrum efficient. Also DVB-T2 has just been released by the DVB organisation for validation by standards body ETSI.[16].
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