Cable television is a system of providing television to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through fixed optical fibers or coaxial cables as opposed to the over-the-air method used in traditional television broadcasting (via radio waves) in which a television antenna is required. FM radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephony, and similar non-television services may also be provided.
The abbreviation CATV is often used to mean "Cable TV". It originally stood for Community Antenna Television , from cable television's origins in 1948: in areas where over-the-air reception was limited by distance from tranmitters or mountainous terrain, large "community antennas" were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes.
It is most commonplace in North America, Europe, Australia and East Asia, though it is present in many other countries, mainly in South America and the Middle East. Cable TV has had little success in Africa, as it is not cost-effective to lay cables in sparsely populated areas. So-called "wireless cable" or microwave-based systems are used instead.
Cable television deployments
Asia
Mongolia
There are several cable tv providers in Mongolia. The main three are "SuperVision", "Hiimori" and "Sansar CATV". All three cover approximately 10 national channels and 40 foreign channels, such as CNN, BBC, NHK. Among them "SuperVision" is known for its superior quality and gives much more interesting channels, such as National Geographic and Discovery. "Sansar" and "Hiimori" and other smaller companies fill their channel list with Chinese and Indian channels.
Maldives
There over 100 cable TV operators across the country. As the population of the Maldives is separated across around 200 inhabited islands, there is a cable TV operator for nearly every island. Media Net Pvt. Ltd. is the country's largest cable TV operator. Media Net is a Male-based cable TV operator that provides cable and MMDS service to five islands near Male. Media Net holds the license of distribution for 41 channels and distributes channels to nearly all the operators of the country. In Maldives, cable TV subscribers can get most premium channels available in Asia.
Latin America
Panamá
From 2000, Cable TV adoption has been impulsed with the fusion of Cable Onda and Corporación Medcom. Several companies compete for the Panamanian market, such as CTV, Cable Onda, Cablevision, and others. Cable Onda is the largest. The penetration of CableTV in Panamá is at 40%.
Dominican Republic
The cable television in the Dominican Republic are provided by a variety of companies. These companies offer both English and Spanish language television, plus a range of channels in other languages, high definition channels, Pay-per-view movies and events, sports packages and premium movies channels such as HBO, Playboy TV, Cinecanal, etc. Also, the channels are from not only the Dominican Republic, but also the United States and Europe. In the Dominican Republic television spectrum there are 46 in VHF and UHF channels free-to-air channels. The free of charge channels programming consists mainly of locally produced entertainment shows, news, and comedy shows; and foreign sit-comes, soap operas, movies, cartoons, and sports programs.
The main service provider in the Dominican Republic is Telecable from Tricom. Aster is concentrated in Santo Domingo, but is expanding its service throughout the Dominican Republic. There are also new companies using new technologies that are expanding quickly such as Claro TV (IPTV), Wind Telecom(MMDS) and SKY(Satellite TV).
Europe
Ireland
Main article: Cable Television in IrelandCable television is the most common system for distributing multi-channel television in Ireland. With more than 40 year of history and extensive networks of both wired and "wireless" cable, Ireland is amongst the most cabled countries in Europe. Forty percent of Irish homes received cable television in September 2006. The figure dropped slightly in the early years of the 21st century due to the increased popularity of satellite reception, notably Sky, but has stabilised recently.
Virgin Media owns the cable television licence for Northern Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, UPC Ireland, which trades under the brand name Chorus NTL, is by far the largest cable and MMDS operator, owning all of the state's MMDS licences and almost all of the state's cable TV operators. UPC offers analogue and digital cable television services in cities and towns throughout the country (with the exception of Cork, where the network is digital-only). It offers MMDS services in rural areas. In areas previously served by NTL, the network is digital-only, while Chorus areas still have both analgoue and digital services. Other than UPC, the only other operator providing analogue and digital cable is Casey Cablevision, which operates inDungarvan, County Waterford. There also exists a small number of analogue-only cable networks such as the Longford service Crossan Cable.
United Kingdom
When the infant BBC Television service was started in 1932, Rediffusion, which had supplied cable radio services since 1928, started providing "Pipe TV" to its customers who had difficulties tuning into the weak TV broadcast signal.
Suspended during World War II, the BBC service was re-established in June 1946, and had only one transmitter, at Alexandra Palace, which served the London area. From the end of 1949, new transmitters were steadily opened to serve other major conurbations, and then smaller areas of population. The areas on the fringes of the transmitter coverage provided an opportunity for Rediffusion and other commercial companies to expand cable systems to enlarge the viewing audience for the one BBC television channel which then existed. The first was in Gloucester in 1950 and the process gathered pace over the next few years, especially after a second television channel, ITV, was launched in 1955 to compete with the BBC. By the late 1970s, two and a half million British homes received their television service via cable.
By law, these cable systems were restricted to the relay of the public broadcast channels, which meant that as the transmitter network became more comprehensive the incentive to subscribe to cable was reduced and they began to lose customers. In 1982, a radical liberalisation of the law on cable was proposed by the Information Technology Advisory Panel , for the sake of promoting a new generation of broadband cable systems leading to the wired society. After setting up and receiving the conclusions of the Hunt Inquiry into Cable Expansion and Broadcasting Policy, the Government decided to proceed with liberalisation and two pieces of legislation: the Cable and Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act, were enacted in 1984.
The result was that cable systems were permitted to carry as many new television channels as they liked, as well as providing a telephone service and interactive services of many kinds (as since made familiar by the Internet). To maintain the momentum of the perceived commercial interest in this new investment opportunity, in 1983 the Government itself granted eleven interim franchises for new broadband systems each covering a community of up to around 100,000 homes, but the competitive franchising process was otherwise left to the new regulatory body, the Cable Authority, which took on its powers from 1 January 1985.
The franchising process proceeded steadily, but the actual construction of new systems was slow, as doubts about an adequate payback from the substantial investment persisted. By the end of 1990 almost 15 million homes had been included in franchised areas, but only 828,000 of these had been passed by broadband cable and only 149,000 were actually subscribing. Thereafter, however, construction accelerated and take-up steadily improved.
The first new television channels launched for carriage on cable systems (going live in March 1984) were Sky Channel, Screensport, Music Box and TEN - the Movie Channel. Others followed, some were merged or closed down, but the range expanded. A similar flux was seen among the operators of cable systems: franchises were granted to a host of different companies, but 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.
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 3 March 2006 with the company being named ntl Incorporated . For the time being the two brand names and services were marketed separately. However, following NTL's acquisition of Virgin Mobile, the NTL and Telewest services were rebranded Virgin Media on 2007-02-08 creating a single cable operator covering more than 95% of the UK cable market.
There are a small number of other surviving cable television companies in the UK outside of NTL including WightCable (Isle of Wight) and Smallworld (Ayrshire, Carlisle and Lancashire).
Cable TV faces intense competition from British Sky Broadcasting's Sky Digital satellite television service. Most channels a
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