Quote:
Originally Posted by alestescarrow
This is the document which I linked above:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archi...e/metrocab.pdf
Its rather over-ambitious considering Metro did pay a significant amount of money to secure this licence.
I lived in Cardiff for the past 3 years and its surprising the amount of Rediffusion infrastructure that is still firmly in place and unused - was there ever a period in time when the Narrowband and Broadband operators actually competed in the same area against each other, or did the Narrowband almost instantly sell their customer base to the Broadband / just shut down instantly? |
I apologies for not looking at your link, that is indeed the document I was thinking of written by Tricky Dickey himself.
I never visited the Cardiff Rediffusion network, it was one of the old HF networks and I had the impression it only covered a small part of Cardiff. (Was it the Thornhill area?)
As for running alongside I'm not really sure, but in those days the cable companies had to meet annual build targets. CableTel/ntl used some of the closed down Rediffusion/Metro closed down networks to claim as 'homes passed' to avoid fines. I remember one system in Bridgend area that had miles of cable just to feed a few customers in the bottom of a valley. It may have only been feeding a few homes but it passed thousands.
I do remember Maxwell/Metro or whatever we were called at the time suddenly taking an interest in the area when the Cardiff area franchise was announced, at the time I didn't even know they had anything there and it was I believe slowly running down to closure. I'm 99% certain that the network never carried anything other than the terrestrial off air channels. I believe there were very few customers by the time CableTel started building and I seem to recall one of the engineers shutting it down and bringing equipment back to the workshop.
Metro bid for the Mid Glamorgan franchise, again it was all pie in the sky. They ended up meeting CableTel on the steps of OFCOM the day the franchise bid had to be submitted.
It resulted in Metro selling about half of the company (Wales and Hertfordshire) for about 10 times more than they had paid for the whole lot. Thats how I ended up working for CableTel/ntl and it all went down hill from there.
Metro did have a modern system I got involved with in the Rhondda, it was an 860MHz pilot system with the intention to put RF telephony on it. This was shut within a few years of ntl taking over because the Americans considered that phone and data belonged on the telco network, and CATV was something stuck to the bottom of their shoes.
Funny how not many years later it was an American idea to launch Broadband using the CATV network
I stopped for a few more years and transferred to ntl Cardiff, I got out in early 2001 when I realised the ntl business model was doomed to fail.
ps. There was also a company called Newport Cablevision that was originally awarded the Newport franchise. One of the directors owned Penhow castle, I think they got the franchise but failed to obtain the funds to build.