Chorus Communications is a communications provider in Ireland, it offers internet, television and telephone services.

The company was formed in 2000, following the buy out of the CMI operator by Irish Multichannel ; and the integration of a number of other regional providers including Suir Nore Relays , Westward Cable and Cork Communications . This was seen as an attempt to overturn the dominance of NTL, even though the two shared no franchise areas.

With CMI's network being pure CATV, having been assembled from a number of private providers, such as Dunnes Electrical in Maynooth and Celbridge, it was expected that the new Chorus would have to perform some extreme network consilidation.

The fractured nature of the network has led to consumers in different areas getting different channel packages, and has led to extreme problems for the customer services team, who often have no idea what channel package a customer has, at least beyond some core channels.

Since the formation of the unified company, over €130M has been spent on network infrastructure, including providing fibre and microwave links between regions. This has meant customers who were using CATV in the Community Antenna sense now generally have significantly higher quality signal, although poor transmission networks and high compression on microwave links cause MPEG-esque motion problems, even on analogue links

As of 2005, Chorus provide an bewildering array of services, including analogue MMDS, digital MMDS, analogue and digital cable TV, broadband and dialup internet, and both landline and wireless (not mobile) telephone lines. Some areas which had MMDS from Irish Multichannel also had cable from CMI, and hence have a choice of services, often with one being analogue and the other digital.

The majority of customers now get their own Chorus Sports channel, which mainly specialises in GAA coverage; although this channel was put on many analogue links at the expense of Deutsche Welle.

See Also

• List of Irish companies

External link

• Official site
• Network Map