NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited was a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) company in Ireland. As of 2005 it was owned by Liberty Global Europe (see history, below), having been divested by NTL. It was rebranded as UPC Ireland (now called Virgin Media Ireland). Services The company held cable television licences for Dublin, Galway, and Waterford cities (with the Dublin licences also covering Leixlip, County Kildare, Dunboyne, County Meath, and Bray, County Wicklow). It also held MMDS franchises for cells covering the above counties, as well as County Mayo. It provided an analogue cable television service (with a very high take up in its areas passed), which provided the Irish terrestrial channels, plus BBC One, BBC Two, UTV, Channel 4, Sky1 and a small number of other channels. It also provided a digital television service, with over a third of its customer base taking a digital service. The company also converted its entire MMDS network to digital, with an offering of approximately seventy TV and radio services, while MMDS was switched off. In its final years, the company rolled out broadband and enabled one third of its Dublin and 100% of its network in Galway and Waterford for broadband, becoming a major broadband provider in Ireland. History RTÉ / Telecom Éireann ownership The company began operations in 1970 as RTÉ Relays, a subsidiary of Raidió Teilifís Éireann. It carried four channels – RTÉ Television, BBC1, BBC2, and Ulster Television. In 1984, the company merged with Dublin Cable Systems, itself the product of a merger of Marlin Cable with Phoenix Relays. In 1986, the Irish Government began to allow Irish cable companies to carry non-terrestrial (i.e. satellite) services. In the same year, RTÉ merged all of its cable operations (including two other cable companies, Galway Cablevision and Waterford Cablevision) to form Cablelink Limited. As Cablelink, the company was Ireland's largest cable company by far, and expanded to a fifteen channel service (plus premium channels) gradually. In 1990, Telecom Éireann acquired 60% of the company from RTÉ. The biggest controversy the company managed to embroil itself during this time was a dispute with British Sky Broadcasting over carriage fees for Sky One and Sky News. This led to the two channels being pulled from the platform from 1992 to 1994. The "return of Bart Simpson" was prematurely announced by Cablelink several times before the channels actually reappeared. The company also