UPC Ireland
 |
|
| Private company limited by shares | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 12 December 2005 |
| Headquarters | Eastpoint Business Park, Dublin, Ireland |
|
Area served
|
Ireland |
|
Key people
|
Tony Hanway |
| Products |
Broadcast television Cable television Broadband Internet Telephone Mobile phone |
| Revenue | $468.8 million |
| Owner | Liberty Global |
|
Number of employees
|
800 |
| Parent | Virgin Media |
| Subsidiaries | TV3 Group |
| Website | www |
Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the Republic of Ireland. As of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and digital (VoIP) telephony to 1.1 million customers. Virgin Media Ireland previously traded under the branding Chorus NTL until 4 May 2010 and UPC Ireland until 5 October 2015. It is primarily in competition with Sky Ireland, eir and Vodafone in the Irish pay TV market.
Liberty Global and its predecessors UGC Europe and Tele-Communications Inc. have had shareholdings in Chorus Communications and its predecessor, Princes Holdings (Irish Multichannel), since the company's formation in the early 1990s. Originally a joint venture with Independent News and Media, IN&M sold its shares to Liberty in 2004.
In May 2005, NTL agreed to sell its Irish operations NTL Ireland (previously Cablelink) to Liberty Global. Morgan Stanley held the shareholding until Competition Authority approval was obtained. This occurred in December 2005 and UPC Ireland came into being on 12 December 2005.
In 2006, UPC Ireland began to integrate the brands Chorus and NTL to form Chorus NTL. Branding wise, on 5 September 2006 NTL's website was changed to the same design as Chorus i.e., itself based on UPC Netherlands' website design at the time. 25 January 2007, NTL Ireland updated the electronic programme guide software to remove the NTL logo and all mention of the NTL name.
On 31 January 2007, NTL and Chorus began advertising jointly, although the adverts were simply the ongoing campaign from NTL with the Chorus logo added to them. On 4 June 2007 @ntlworld.ie e-mail addresses switched to @upcmail.ie. The new UPC Mediabox set top boxes (STBs) which contain a hardrive based digital video recording system are fully UPC branded (albeit with the original UPC logo rather than the newer lowercase design) and come with a much enhanced EPG. These were rolled out on both the ex NTL and Chorus cable networks. From 2008, the old Pace STBs supplied by NTL Ireland (and originally designed for NTL UK) were replaced with new Pace STBs designed for UPC, also branded "UPC Mediabox" but without the hard drive/recording capabilities. In a Sunday Business Post article on 11 February 2007, UPC Ireland's marketing manager revealed that the rebrand was due to take place no later than May 2007. This deadline was missed. On 16 May 2007 UPC Netherlands introduced a new UPC logo, which was rolled out across UPC's European subsidiaries.
...
Wikipedia