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Australia Cable television services have been available in Australia since 1995. There are currently three major and four minor cable television providers in Australia - Foxtel, Optus TV. Minor providers include Austar, TransACT, Bright Telecommunications and Neighbourhood Cable, which only operate in limited areas. Like the UK, cable is a minority means of receiving access to subscription television in Australia. Satellite distribution is more common. Due to its history, financial backing and market dominance, most local versions of channels are either owned directly by Foxtel and Austar or through related companies. In terms of coverage, Foxtel's cable network covers parts of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Optus's network covers small parts of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, though its restrictive subscription rules means that many people living in apartments or confined living areas are unable to be connected. Austar is available by satellite in most of regional and rural Australia, but does have a small cable network in the city of Darwin. TransACT is only available in the city of Canberra, where a custom cable network was developed. A simular situation exists in Perth where a small area is covered by Bright Telecommunications as well in parts of Geelong, Ballarat and Mildura that are reached by Neighbourhood Cable. Canada Hong Kong Only one traditional cable provider operates in Hong Kong, i-Cable Communications Limited (branded as "CableTV"). Another three operators offers pay-TV via DSL, they are Now Broadband TV (PCCW), HKBN Digital TV and TVB PayVision. Many in Hong Kong instead watch subscription TV using satellite systems like STAR TV. Mexico The first cable system started to operate in the early Sixties in Monterrey, as a CATV service (an antenna at the top of the Loma Larga, which could get TV signals from South Texas). Most of the other major cities didn't develop cable systems until the late Eighties, due to government censorship. By 1989 the industry had had a major impulse with the founding of Multivisión—a MMDS system who started to develop its own channels in Spanish—and the later development of companies such as Cablemas and Megacable. Over the past few years, many US networks have started to develop content for the Latin American market, such as CNN en Español, MTV, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, and others. The country also has a DTH service called SKY (Televisa & News Corp. owned). Recently DirecTV merged with Sky. The dominant company nowadays is Megacable and Grupo HEVI. New Zealand TelstraClear operate a cable television network in Wellington, Kapati and Christchurch. Customers can subscribe to plans incorporating between 25 and 48 channels. Most content is offered on behalf of Sky Network Television however some channels such as TBN, Discovery Travel and Adventure and Deutsche welle are broadcast exclusively through TelstraClear. Republic of Ireland Singapore StarHub Cable Vision is the sole cable television operator in Singapore, where private ownership of satellite dishes is banned. StarHub Cable Vision was formed as a result of a merger between StarHub and Singapore Cable Vision on 15 May 2002. The latter first began broadcasting as a terrestrial pay-television operator in 1992 as the first cable network was not completed until 1995. Around 15% of households and offices in Singapore are connected to the StarHub network. United Kingdom In the UK Cable Television had its origins in 1938, when the first Community Antenna TV systems were setup in towns including Bristol and Hull, for homes which couldn't receive transmissions over the air; however these signals were on the 405-line system. In the 1960s Rediffusion Vision was setup to provide cable television in the newer 625-line and PAL formats. In the early 1980s Rediffusion Vision supplemented its service with other channels including The Music Box, Mirrorvision, Lifesyle Screensport, Sky Channel and TEN. The service was renamed to Rediffusion Cablevision. In the United Kingdom, the current generation of cable television began in the late 1980s with the issue of franchises to many local operators. These small operations proved uneconomic and there has been a continuing process of consolidation and re-financing. By 2000 the two principal cable operators were NTL and Telewest. NTL's cable service was originally known as CableTel and grew rapidly through the acquisition of, among others, ComTel (which itself had bought Telecential), Comcast, Diamond Cable and finally, in 1999, the residential and small business operations of Cable & Wireless. Telewest also steadily acquired local operators. In 2005 it was announced that NTL and Telewest would merge, after a period of co-operation in the preceding few years. This merger was completed on 3rd March 2006 with the company being named ntl Incorporated. For the time being the two brand names and services will still be marketed separately; however they are slowly being integrated under the ntl:Telewest brand to create a single cable operator for more than 95% of the UK market, and are likely to eventually, possibly as early as 2007, come under the Virgin Group brand following NTL's April 2006 aqusition of Virgin Mobile . There are a small number of other surviving cable television companies in the UK outside of NTL including Kingston Communications (East Riding of Yorkshire) and WightCable (Isle of Wight, Ayrshire, Carlisle and Lancashire). Cable TV faces intense competition from SkyDigital's satellite television service, although most channels on that platform are also carried on cable (however they do lack features- for example interaction news or football - available to Sky Digital viewers). Very few channels are now exclusive to cable, usually channels showing local programming. However, subscription-funded digital terrestrial television proved less of a competitive threat. The first system, ITV Digital, went into liquidation in 2002. Top Up TV later replaced it, however this service is shrinking as the DVB-T multiplex owners are finding FTA broadcasting more profitable. Another potential source of competition in the future will be TV over broadband. This was initially launched, using ADSL, in London, where it is provided by HomeChoice. An IPTV service was also provided in Hull by Kingston Communications, but this ceased operations in April 2006. As the speed and availability of broadband connections increase, more TV content can be delivered using protocols such as IPTV. United States The majority of American television viewers get their signal from CATV. Europe According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, there were 58 million cable households in the European Union as of 31 December 2004, i.e. a rate of penetration of 32 % of the television households. 5.7 millions were connected to digital networks. Switzerland In Switzerland, there is practically no household that doesn't have cable TV. Ironically, despite this good coverage, Switzerland has only a few state TV stations (two each for the German, French and Italian-speaking parts of the country); there are no private stations with an outreach comparable to these state channels. To watch news or political information; Swiss channels are preferred, but in the entertainment sector (feature movies, comedies, talk shows), private TV stations from Germany, France and Italy are dominant. Other cable-based services Coaxial cables are capable of bi-directional carriage of signals as well as the transmission of large amounts of data. Cable television signals use only a portion of the bandwidth available over coaxial lines. This leaves plenty of space available for other digital services such as broadband internet and cable telephony. Broadband internet is achieved over coaxial cable by using cable modems to convert the network data into a type of digital signal that can be transferred over coaxial cable. One problem with some cable systems is the older amplifiers placed along the cable routes are unidirectional thus in order to allow for uploading of data the customer would need to use an analog modem to provide for the upstream connection. This limited the upstream speed to 31.2k and prevented the always-on convenience broadband internet typically provides. Many large cable systems have upgraded or are upgrading their equipment to allow for bi-directional signals, thus allowing for greater upload speed and always-on convenience, though these upgrades are expensive. In North America and Europe many cable operators have already introduced cable telephone service, which operates just like existing fixed line operators. This service involves installing a special telephone interface at the customer's premises that converts the analog signals from the customer's in-home wiring into a digital signal, which is then sent on the local loop (replacing the analog last mile, or POTS) to the company's switching center, where it is connected to the PSTN. The biggest obstacle to cable telephone service is the need for nearly 100% reliable service for emergency calls. One of the standards available for digital cable telephony, PacketCable, seems to be the most promising and able to work with the Quality of Service demands of traditional analog POTS service. The biggest advantage to digital cable telephone service is similar to the advantage of digital cable TV, namely that data can be compressed, resulting in much less bandwidth used than a dedicated analog circuit-switched service. Other advantages include better voice quality and integration to a VoIP network providing cheap or unlimited nationwide and international calling. Note that in many cases, digital cable telephone service is separate from cable modem service being offered by many cable companies and does not rely on IP traffic or the Internet. Beginning in 2004 in the United States, the traditional cable television providers and traditional telecommunication companies increasingly compete in providing voice, video and data services to residences. The combination of TV, telephony and Internet access is commonly called triple play regardless of whether CATV or telcos offer it. | ||||||||||
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