Chorus Communications

Chorus, officially Chorus Communication Limited, was a communications provider in Ireland offering internet, television and telephone services. It was owned by Liberty Global Europe and ultimately controlled by John C. Malone's Liberty Media.

Based in Limerick (and also with offices in Cork), it owned the cable television licenses for the cities of Cork and Limerick as well as for most towns where cable networks existed. A small number of towns (notably Dungarvan) had locally run cable networks. It also held the MMDS licences for many towns across Ireland. The cable networks in the cities of Dublin, Galway and Waterford and the MMDS services for towns in those counties as well Mayo were operated by NTL Ireland.

In 2005 NTL sold its Irish operation to Liberty Global. As a result, cable and MMDS services across the country were temporarily branded "Chorus NTL" before ultimately rebranding to "UPC Ireland" (now Virgin Media Ireland) in 2010, bringing them into line with Liberty Global's TV offerings elsewhere in Europe.

History

The company was formed in 2000 following the buyout of CMI (Cable Management Ireland) by Irish Multichannel (an offshoot of Princes Holdings Limited). Irish Multichannel, a joint venture between Independent News and Media and TCI (later Liberty Media) had been the result of a series of mergers between several regional companies, most notably East Coast Multichannel, Horizon Multichannel, Cork Communications and Westward Cable. Irish Multichannel held the MMDS licences for most of Ireland apart from counties Dublin, Galway and Waterford which were held by Cablelink (later NTL Ireland). It also had an extensive cable network in Cork and Limerick. CMI was owned by a number of Irish businessmen. Its network was pure CATV, having been assembled from a number of private providers. it was thus expected that the newly formed Chorus would have to perform some extreme network consolidation. It went on to purchase Suir-Nore Relays shortly after the merger.

In late 2004 Independent News and Media sold its shares in Chorus to Liberty Media International which in turn transferred its shareholding in the company to its affiliate, UGC Europe (now Liberty Global Europe). On 12 December 2005 Liberty Global Europe completed its acquisition of NTL Ireland, the country's other major cable operator. The two companies were soon integrated into one business called Chorus NTL, later adopting Liberty Global's UPC brand.

Services

The fractured nature of the network led to consumers in different areas getting different channel packages and consequently extreme problems for the customer services team who often had no idea what channel package a customer had least beyond core channels. Chorus' customer service was the subject of much criticism. In November 2004 it was reported that the company came last in a global customer service survey of 64 telecom companies, receiving a score of just 2.6 out of 10 for response times to customer queries from the Customer Respect Index (CRI). Chorus lost significant market share to Sky who launched their digital satellite service in Ireland in the early 2000s.

Following the formation of the unified company, over €130M was spent on network infrastructure, including fibre and microwave links between regions. This meant customers who were using CATV in the ''Community Antenna'' sense now generally got a significantly higher quality signal, although poor transmission networks and high compression on microwave links caused MPEG-esque motion problems, even on analogue links.

Chorus provided a bewildering array of services including analogue MMDS, digital MMDS, analogue cable, digital cable, broadband as well as dialup internet and both landline and wireless (not to be confused with mobile) telephone lines. Some areas which could receive MMDS from Irish Multichannel also had cable inherited from CMI, resulting in a choice of services, often one analogue and the other digital. Figures from December 2004 show that the company had a reach of 319,000 homes of which 211,000 had cable or MMDS, 600 had broadband and 500 had telephone services. The future looked bleak for their MMDS operations after BBC and ITV services went free to air on satellite. These channels were often seen as the main reason for keeping the analogue service and were a key feature in Chorus marketing.

The Chorus Digital package was launched on 2 October 2000. It offered a standard line-up in all areas, although it was geared towards MMDS rather than cable and thus offered a smaller line-up than the larger capacity of cable would allow. Alongside the traditional terrestrial stations, channels from the BBC
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