Boxer wins Irish DTT contract

Irish eyes are smiling for Boxer's Robert

The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has awarded in principal three national DTT multiplexes to a consortium of the Swedish DTT operator Boxer and the Communicorp Group. Both will own 50% of Boxer DTT Limited.
“Ireland will be a major challenge. We will be competing with international pay-TV companies such as BSkyB and the cable-TV operator UPC,” said Per Norman, CEO at Boxer.

Subject to negotiations Boxer will construct and operate three multiplexes that will be scheduled to commence broadcasting in 2009. The public broadcaster RTE has been gifted a multiplex that will carry the existing terrestrial services.

Communications minister Eamon Ryan welcomed the decision and commended the BCI on the speed at which they had made their conclusions. “I know that RTE have commenced work on upgrading their analogue television network and that they expect to provide national free to air digital services starting from Autumn 2009. This, coupled with today’s decision, means that we are on schedule for the switch over to digital television in Ireland,” he said.

Boxer, owned by the Swedish transmission company Teracom, fought off competition from Easy TV (a joint venture between RTE and Liberty Global) and One Vision (comprising Eircom, Arqiva, Setanta and Ireland’s TV3).

In a statement RTE wished the Boxer-Communicorp consortium well, though didn’t go so far as to name them. The public broadcaster said it found its collaboration with Liberty Media “fruitful” and added it looked forwarded to working with the cablenet again in the future.

Boxer’s local partner Communicorp Group is one of Ireland’s largest media companies and runs a series of commercial radio networks in a number of countries.

The DTT licence will run for 12 years.