Telecommunications in Ireland operate in a regulated competitive market that provides customers with a wide array of advanced digital services. This article explores Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure including: fixed and mobile networks, The voice, data and Internet services, cable television, developments in next-generation networks and broadcast networks for radio and television.
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets related products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 and Australia's largest telecommunications company by market share.
JT Group Limited is the parent company of several subsidiaries including Jersey Telecom Limited and Wave Telecom Limited. Jersey Telecom is the former monopoly operator in the Bailiwick of Jersey. JT provides telecommunications, Internet access and other services, mostly within the Channel Islands.
Liberty Global plc is a multinational telecommunications company with headquarters in London, Amsterdam and Denver. Its respective legal names are Liberty Global Plc, Liberty Global B.V. and Liberty Global, Inc., with the first of these being publicly traded. It was formed in 2005 by the merger of the international arm of Liberty Media and UnitedGlobalCom (UGC).
Magnet Networks, trading as Magnet Plus, is an Irish company providing telephone and broadband internet services which was launched in Dublin in 2004. Originally owned by the US-based international investment company Columbia Ventures Corporation (CVC), it was acquired in December 2020 by the "Irish investment vehicle" Speed Fibre Group. Speed Fibre Group, itself a subsidiary of the Irish Infrastructure Fund, also owned AirSpeed Telecom and, in 2021, these two companies joined to operate under a combined "Magnet Plus" brand. As of 2020, Magnet Networks reportedly had approximately 100 staff.
Virgin Media is a telecommunications company from Britain, founded in 2007, which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica.
In telecommunications, cable Internet access, shortened to cable Internet, is a form of broadband internet access which uses the same infrastructure as cable television. Like digital subscriber line and fiber to the premises services, cable Internet access provides network edge connectivity from the Internet service provider to an end user. It is integrated into the cable television infrastructure analogously to DSL which uses the existing telephone network. Cable TV networks and telecommunications networks are the two predominant forms of residential Internet access. Recently, both have seen increased competition from fiber deployments, wireless, mobile networks and satellite internet access.
Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global (50%) and Telefónica (50%) after the merger its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. Currently about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.
Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the country. As of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and digital (VoIP) telephony to 1 million customers. Until 4 May 2010, Virgin Media Ireland traded under the name Chorus NTL and UPC Ireland until 5 October 2015. Its main competitors in the Irish pay TV market are Sky Ireland, Eir and Vodafone Ireland.
Sure, a trading brand of Batelco, is a telecommunications company in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, the Falkland Islands, St. Helena, Ascension Island, and the British Indian Ocean Territory. Sure is the largest tri-island mobile operator across the Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s, almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
Smallworld Fibre was a British telecommunications company based in Irvine, North Ayrshire. Their coverage area used to be Irvine, Dreghorn, Troon, and Kilmarnock in the west of Scotland, and Carlisle, Lancaster and Morecambe in the northwest of England, where they served over 40,000 homes. Smallworld provided broadband, telephone, and digital television services to residential customers from 2001 to 2014, when the company was acquired by Virgin Media.
UPC was the largest cable operator in Switzerland with around 1.1 million residential and business customers and was formed in 1994 through the merger of several cable operators. UPC has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global from 2005 until its discontinuation in 2022.
Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. Suitability for certain applications, or technically a certain quality of service, is often assumed. For instance, low round trip delay would normally be assumed to be well under 150ms and suitable for Voice over IP, online gaming, financial trading especially arbitrage, virtual private networks and other latency-sensitive applications. This would rule out satellite Internet as inherently high-latency. In some applications, utility-grade reliability or security are often also assumed or defined as requirements. There is no single definition of broadband and official plans may refer to any or none of these criteria.
In Northern Ireland over 80% of the population has access to the internet, with 9 in 10 people having an internet connection in the home.
Inter is a Venezuelan television broadcaster and telecommunications provider headquartered in Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela. Inter was founded in 1996 as InterCable. Its fiscal name is Corporacion Telemic C.A, and its main shareholder is the investment fund HM Capital Partners.
This is a timeline of cable television in the United Kingdom.
The telecommunications in Guernsey relate to communication systems in Bailiwick of Guernsey, which is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France.
CityFibre is an independent British telecommunications network provider, providing gigabit-capable FTTP broadband across the UK. They are the third-largest network provider in the UK, after Openreach and Virgin Media. It is considered one of the UK's "altnets", in reference to being an alternative to Openreach.
