The recent launch of new Irish television channel, UTV Ireland on Jan 1st 2015, is sure to shake up the media industry and is great news for Ireland on the job front. The arrival of UTV Ireland has created 120 jobs spread across Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Belfast and its Dublin head office.
In the run up to the launch, miles and miles of cable and infrastructure were installed, studios built and new satellite systems installed by the UTV Media Group. Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast have been linked via their in-house communications links called ‘U-Net’, which has been designed and built with the ability to move pictures and data between the locations.
Coinciding with this, enet, the open access network operator and the company responsible for managing the State’s Metropolitan Area Network (MANs) fibre infrastructure, have signed a deal with Colt Technology Services Ireland which has provided UTV with a high speed, unlimited capacity fibre network in three of their Irish locations, better enabling the effectiveness of the U-Net network.
Under the terms of this deal, UTV Ireland have taken three connections which provides them with end-to-end fibre connection directly to these premises. These three connections will be serving regional news bureaus based in Cork (96fm Studios), Limerick (95fm Studios) and Galway (Dockgate House). The radio stations in Cork and Limerick being used as the local news studios are already owned by the UTV Media Group.
This high capacity service is being delivered to these locations by Colt Technology Services, a network, data centre and IT services provider, via enet MAN infrastructure in Cork, Limerick and Galway.
Michael Corcoran, Director of Broadcast Technology and Operations, commented, “We were impressed with the project approach, customer documentation provided and on-site implementation by enet for building this portion of U-Net. We look forward to reliably delivering video and data from the regional sites into our Dublin HQ using enet’s fibre technology.”
Conal Henry, CEO of enet, commented, “This connection demonstrates enet’s ambition to stimulate the rollout of advanced technologies to businesses all over Ireland. UTV Ireland will be benefiting from the best available technology that media industries now require.”
One of the most successful media companies based in the UK and Ireland, the UTV Media Group incorporates broadcasting and digital media assets across its radio and television divisions. It currently has more than 900 employees and continues to grow.