2008 Multiplex Licensing
The Commission engaged in two phases of targeted consultation to assist in the development of its DTT Multiplex Licensing Policy. These consultations ran from May to December 2007 and involved the production of a comprehensive consultation document outlining policy proposals in relation to DTT licensing and the commissioning of independent research on DTT.
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 7, 2008.
The BCI’s application process for the DTT multiplex contracts ran for a period of eight weeks. 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.
Nine 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.
The BCI on 21 July 2008 announced Boxer DTT Ltd trading as Boxer as the sole winner to operate the three commercial multiplexes. Boxer DTT Ltd is a consortium made up of Communicorp, Boxer TV Access in Sweden and BT Ireland. The award of the contracts is subject to clarifications and the successful outcome of contract negotiations.
In the 2008 perspective Boxer DTT Ireland, tentative start date was January in 2009 in Ireland which was considered unrealistic. Standards chosen were MPEG4/H.264 and DVB-T. Boxer TV Access had a 50% holding in Boxer Ireland.
In April 2009 it was announced that Boxer had decided to decline the license offered to the consortium. The BCI instead offered the license to the runner up, Onevision.
At the end of April 2010 the negotiations with Onevision ended. In May 2010 the Contract was offered to Easy TV (the RTE / Liberty Global consortium. It's not clear if they will accept it (3 May 2010) A DTT Information Campaign was announced by the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources Irish Government Department to launch in March 2009 ahead of the September 2009 launch of Irish DTT. AS of December 2009, the information campaign has not launched and has been postponed until after Saorview launches in public testing phase. The Information Campaign is to be undertaken by the BAI, with support of the Department.
As of October 30, 2010 FTA DTT, which will be known as Saorview, has launched following a direction from the Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, to RTÉ and signing of the RTÉ (National Television Multiplex) Order 2010 (S.I. No. 85 of 2010) on February 26, 2010. The rollout of FTA Saorview DTT will now proceed, and a commercial DTT competition may well be deferred until the economic situation improves.
Easy TV considered its position on the license offer which it was offered on April 29, 2010. The Easy TV consortium informed the BAI on 12 May 2010 that it was declining their offer to pursue negotiations regarding the Commercial DTT Multiplex Licence. RTÉ publicly confirmed on 14 May 2010 Easy TV was "declining their offer to pursue negotiations" on the DTT contract. The BAI officially confirmed Easy TV's withdrawal and the conclusion of the current DTT licensing process on 18 May 2010. On 1 July 2010 RTÉ announced that Mary Curtis their current deputy head of TV programming would take on the role of Director of Digital Switchover (DSO).
Read more about this topic: Digital Terrestrial Television In The Republic Of Ireland