Cable Television in the UK

In 2012, the UK is set to completely switch over to digital TV; viewers may watch using Freeview (through an aerial ) or Sky Digital (through a satellite dish),or alternatley, many people also have the option of obtaining their digital TV via under-street fibre-optic cables. Cable TV offers more channels than the free-to-view digital TV service Freeview, but less channels that the competing satellite TV service supplied by Sky TV. However, cable TV is only available in parts of the UK, typically areas of high population. It is thought that approximately 15 million homes in the UK have access to digital cable TV.

In the UK, digital cable TV is provided by Virgin Media (formerly NTL and Telewest) and on the Isle of Wight digital cable TV by Wight Cable.

History of Cable TV in the UK

In 1932, the BBC Television service was started, and a company known as Rediffusion provided radio and TV signals through wired relay networks (Pipe TV) to its customers who had difficulties tuning into the weak TV broadcast signal. This service continued until the cessation of television broadcasts during World War II, but resumed and expanded after the war ended, gathering pace, especially after a second television channel, ITV, was launched in 1955 to compete with the BBC. By the late 1970s, it is estimated that 2.5 million British homes received their television service via cable.

However, as the transmitter network became more comprehensive, the incentive to subscribe to cable was reduced, particularly as cable systems were restricted to the relay of the public broadcast channels. In 1982, a radical liberalisation of the law on cable was proposed by the Information Technology Advisory Panel, and as a result, two pieces of legislation were enacted in 1984: the Cable and Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act. This permitted cable systems to carry new television channels, as well as providing a telephone service and interactive services of many kinds, such as the Internet.

In 1983, the Government granted 11 interim franchises for new broadband systems each covering a community of up to around 100,000 homes, and a new regulatory body (the Cable Authority) took on the competitive franchising process from 1 January 1985. By the end of 1990 almost 15 million homes had been included in franchised areas, although only 828,000 of these had been passed by broadband cable and only 149,000 were subscribing to the service. A process of consolidation saw the growth of large multiple system operators, until by early in the 2000s virtually the whole industry was in the hands of two companies, NTL and Telewest, which went on to merge in 2006, and become rebranded to Virgin Media in 2007, creating a single cable operator that covered more than 95% of the UK cable market. There are a small number of other surviving cable television companies in the UK including WightCable (Isle of Wight) and Smallworld (Ayrshire, Carlisle and Lancashire).

The first new television channels launched for carriage on cable systems were Sky Channel, Screensport, Music Box and TEN - the Movie Channel (going live in March 1984), and others followed. Cable TV faces intense competition from British Sky Broadcasting's Sky Digital satellite television service; although the majority of channels are carried on both platforms, cable TV can often lack "interactive" features such as extra video-screens and text services.