Going Underground

Cable distribution has been around in the UK since the 1950's. Why then did satellite become the more popular method of transmitting?

Cable only covered a relatively small number of homes until relatively recently. Satellite offered nationwide coverage instantly.

Initially cable was only really deployed in areas with poor off-air signals - rather than as a way of getting extra services.

But it was there already. Surely it would have been easier (and maybe cheaper) to upgrade the existing network. I'm thinking of BSB specifically.

Cable was relatively cheap to lay in major urban areas, but once you get outside those areas, it becomes exponentially more expensive to reach the 45% of the country that lives outside cities. Satellite is quite expensive in terms of set up, but it does have the added benefit of reaching almost everybody, rather than getting more expnsive to reach the people outside the cities.

Oh, I agree about the reach of satellite but with an existing cable network if both Sky and BSB were available on cable and satellite at the same time then I believe that both networks would have been viable.

The existing cable networks (Rediffusion, but also some private ones) were analogue copper networks, fed through multiple repeaters throughout cities. They were often ran along gutters, and over poles throughout the city. They were low bandwidth systems, with 8-16 channels at the most, which had evolved from the radio distribution systems. They werevery intensive to maintain given their age, and rarely covered whole cities. Once the IBA opened a relay station nearby, they often became unviable due to the expense of subscribing. They required headends, distribution centres, administration, retail shops for the specialist tvs or tuner boxes. The system couldn't just plug into a tv with a cable tuner, like other analogue cable systems.

BSB was indeed launched on cable before it launched commercially on satellite - not that it helped. There wasn't the capacity to run all 5 BSB channels, Sky's offering, and other 80s satellite stations of the time, along with the redistributed terrestrial channels. I remember that the terrestrial rebroadcasts could not be deactivated, as the TV units/tuners were often locked to cable only.

There was a plan in the eighties for British Telecom to replace the entire copper phone network with fibre - the network equipment and fibre-factories were designed and it was almost ready to go. It would have meant that nationwide cable TV wouldn't be difficult, but Thatcher decided it was uncompetitive and thus private cable companies did the job, but only in commercially viable areas.

I was living in Leeds when Bell Cable Media (now Virgin Media, neé Cable and Wireless) were digging up the streets, and at the time I was a Sixth Former doing a media course. Our tutor managed to arrange a tour of their head end in Seacroft.

At that time their USP was the picture quality, they were using much bigger dishes so had better quality without the sparkles that were common on domestic analogue satellite. They were also plugging that their system was future proof, and Video on Demand would be the big thing.

They were right, but hadn't anticipated the internet, although their cable broadband service soon became the USP, delivering higher speeds and reliability than BT could.

Yes though due to a clause in it's privatisation BT weren't allowed to operate a TV service, and this was still the case until fairly recently.

That probably one of the main factors why cable isn't bigger in the UK, the one company that has connections to virtually every house in the UK couldn't install the technology or run the service

A lot of council estates around Woolwich, Plumstead and Abbey Wood in south-east London were cabled up and had their own station in the early 1970s - Greenwich Cablevision. Those analogue cable connections were still there in the late 90s (and may still be there).



If BT had been allowed to spread cable across the UK, then Jeremy Hunt's local TV dream may have been a little more successful.

I remember the majority of Lewisham being cabled in the 80s, while I didn't get cable from Videotron until 1996.

There was the ILEA cable TV network in the 1970s for educational institutions in London.

In the late 80s, Cable was still quite underdeveloped in the UK. I moved around quite a lot in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s, and lived in large towns and smaller cities. Not ONE of my houses or flats had cable TV passing them. That was over a 10 year period where I lived in around 10 different properties. Satellite was available to all of them (and installed in 4)

I think people underestimate how minor cable was in the UK back in the day.

Also - BSB's selling point was improved picture quality and widescreen. Analogue cable negated both of them.