We have to pay to watch BBC too. BBC Northern Ireland is carried on Sky Digital (on channels 214,215 etc) in the Republic of Ireland.
BBC NI or London is also carried on all of the cable (and MMDS) systems in Ireland meaning that most homes have access.
Part of our Sky basic subscription fee and part of our cable fees go to the BBC as payment for carriage.
ITV (usually UTV although sometimes HTV) and Channel 4 are carried on cable but not on Satellite yet. UTV seem to actively encourage viewers and carry ads directly aimed at the Republic.
MMDS is basically DVB-T carried at 2.5Ghz fully encrypted.
It evolved out of the older analogue MMDS systems which carried up to 20 channels in encrypted PAL using either Eurocrypt or Jerrold Cable Scrambling systems.
It was designed to bring multichannel viewing (particularly UK terrestrial tv) to areas that didn't have access to cable.
The problem now is that because we already bascially have a very developed established and commercially viable digital terrestrial broadcasting system. The roll-out of a normal DVB-T system, like Freeview in the UK, is proving difficult!
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-22-2004).]
