UPC has big plans for broadband
By Adrian Weckler
UPC plans to introduce video ondemand downloading services into the Irish market.
Mark Coan, sales and marketing director of UPC, told The Sunday Business Post that videodownloading was ‘‘among the next steps’’ in UPC’s business strategy. He did not say when the company would introduce such a service.
Coan was speaking in the wake of the company’s announcement that it will launch a 100 megabit-per-second (Mbs) broadband service across its network in August.
Coan said that the service would be available to 340,000 homes at the date of launch. He said that the number of homes able to receive the service would expand to 700,000 by the end of the year. UPC currently has 550,000 television subscribers and 145,000 broadband subcribers.
‘‘We think that there is a definite market for this service,” said Coan. ‘‘Of the people currently subscribing to our broadband service, almost two-thirds choose the higher speeds of 15Mbs or 30Mbs. It puts the lie to the theory that there is no market for faster broadband in Ireland.”
Coan said that the service would have an upload speed of 10Mbs, and would facilitate and ‘‘unlimited’’ amount of download activity. He said the networks were ‘‘designed to deliver 100Mbs to everyone using it’’, although he declined to confirm that the speed would be guaranteed.
He did not indicate what price the new service would be launched at. However, most industry observers expected the service to cost between €60 and €70. ‘‘It’s the culmination of over €300 million of investment in our network,” said Coan. ‘‘And it places us in a position of great strength to offer new services.”
Fi lm-downloading is a strong growth business. Last year, Microsoft launched a film-downloading service on its Xbox Live internet platform for Irish subscribers. Two weeks ago, Apple launched a movie-downloading section on its Irish iTunes store. Films can be downloaded on a 48hour rental basis or purchased outright. Films cost from €3 to €5 to rent and from €8 to€14 to purchase.
In the US, services such as Netflix and Cinema Now are are eating into the film rental market.
