Minister's digital TV move opens way for 50 channels

A service that could provide up to 50 television channels, interactive games and e-mail could be available through your television aerial from next year following the end of a long-running dispute between RTE and the Department of Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands.

Ms Sile de Valera's decision to create two new companies for the transmission and marketing of digital terrestrial television means that people who can't get cable and don't want to buy a satellite dish will be able to receive digital television signals from next year simply by attaching a set-top box to their television. While cable viewers in urban centres are already looking forward to digital services which are expected to come online from the end of the year, many rural television viewers would not have been able to avail of their services.

If the new terrestrial service announced by the Minister follows the British marketing model, the set-top boxes that decode digital signals for ordinary televisions will be provided free.

ONdigital, the digital terrestrial television company in Britain, charges £9.99 sterling a month for 10 "free to view" channels and six additional channels of the viewer's choice, along with a free shopping channel. If subscribers want all of Sky's sports and movie channels, they pay an extra £20 sterling a month.

At the moment, ONdigital is using the Wimbledon tennis tournament to showcase what digital terrestrial can do. BBC digital viewers have the opportunity to shrink the screen on which the match is showing and access player profiles, match statistics and tournament news through their remote control, while still watching the match on an inset.

However, digital terrestrial television in Britain has faced intense competition from the satellite service provided by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB. Sky's interactive coverage of Premiership football has proved a very successful marketing tool.

In Ireland, the most serious competition for digital terrestrial is likely to come from cable companies, NTL and Irish Multichannel. They will both have a headstart on the new terrestrial service.

NTL, which bought Cablelink last year, hopes to start offering a digital television package of between 40 and 50 channels by the end of this year. The company says it will supply interactive channels and an electronic programme guide by the middle of next year. Come 2003, they promise 300 digital channels in all. Irish Multichannel has similarly ambitious plans, while Eircom hopes to offer video on demand down its phone lines by using ASDL technology.

RTE has always voiced frustration that the negotiations over the structure of the digital transmission company slowed down the development of its digital services. Now that the negotiations are over, it says it will try to "move forward as quickly as possible" and "develop and expand the range of public services available to the audience". While the details of the services have not been finalised yet, they are likely to include a news and an educational channel.

RTE will be helped along the way by a cash windfall of between £40 million and £60 million that will result from the sale of its analogue transmission system to a new company. The State broadcaster will own 28 per cent of that new transmission company, while employees who transfer to the new company will get another 5 per cent through an employee share option programme.

However, the deal with Ms de Valera leaves RTE with no share in the separate company that will sell the digital services to consumers. The Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI), which represents local radio stations and TV3, feels it can claim some of the credit for that. Initially, RTE was supposed to get "up to 40 per cent" of the digital terrrestrial transmission entity, then known as Digico. At the end of last year, the IBI, then known as AIRS, hired a lobbying firm and a competition lawyer, and began a political campaign against such a shareholding that involved local radio stations around the State putting pressure on politicians in their catchment area.

While IBI had been assured by the Department that Digico would not affect radio, the local radio stations were convinced that commercial reality would eventually necessitate digital radio coming under the Digico umbrella.

They took heart from media reports in February that the Minister was considering not giving RTE a share in Digico.

An indicator of how seriously the independent broadcasters' political campaign was being taken in Leinster House came when they held a reception in the Shelbourne Hotel in March to mark their name change from AIRS to IBI. More than 50 politicians turned up to the reception at a time when the local radio stations' lobbying campaign on the Broadcasting Bill was in full swing.

While the IBI is happy that it had a major influence on the Bill, RTE feels it has reached an honourable compromise, saying the Minister's new digital framework "accords with the Authority's view of the future".

However, the downside for RTE is that the cash injection that will come with the sale of its transmission network to the new company may mean its case for an increase in the annual TV licence fee falls on deaf ears in Ms de Valera's Department.

roddyosullivan@ireland.com