[i.h]

There's a house on my estate that still has a BSB dish (not a squarial) attatched to the chimney, I guess nobody's felt it's worth going up there to remove it.

I can go one better, there are houses near me with both squarials and Ionica dishes (an early attempt to break the BT monopoly by doing phone lines over microwave links, claims of cheaper calls and more services etc - defunct within a couple of years of launch, mid to late 90s. Probably didn't help that the town had a third competitor as cable was rolled out

The 5 channel thing is even more odd sounding these days when you realise they had two satellites, each with 5 transponders. One satellite was purely for redundancy. Though that arrangement included the potential to expand the number of channels later on.

The IBA were really engineering their satellite service to terrestrial levels of redundancy even though satellite failures are rare

Wouldn't the satellites be on a fixed frequency/polarisation, especially in those days? It seems ridiculous in hindsight that the IBA insisted on two satellites even though they weren't buying them as they would if it was a transmitter site, that was BSB's job.

The IBA engineering announcements showed some of the impressive gold-plating that they did, such as having reception stations at the edges of the country to monitor reception quality and calculate a real world footprint.

Apparently they did strike a deal to get Ireland's 5 DBS channels, but even then 10 channels was well behind what Sky/Astra were offering by the early 90s (and what cable had been offering even before BSB was around).

The entire DBS thing was a flop, especially once you had the likes of Astra and Eurobird launching without the heavy restrictions on channels and technical standards. I'm not even sure if any other countries ever launched their "official" DBS services, or if BSB was the only one.

Did BSB have aspirations to cover Ireland too or was it simply that Ireland wasn't about to do its own thing - they were already interested in MMDS ("wireless cable") anyway.

I suppose the Scandinavian countries successfully did their own thing - the Marco Polo satellites ended up with them of course, and Telenor still owns its own satellites today.

[James2001]

I do find the story of BSB fascinating, and would actually love to have been able to watch it at the time, though it was doomed to failure from the start.

[VMPhil]

There’s a book about it called “Dished” - on my list of books to read when I get time for it…

[WillPS]

There’s a book about it called “Dished” - on my list of books to read when I get time for it…

It's a great read, I thoroughly recommend it.

If Sky hadn't happened then I think BSB would have had little trouble utilising the second satellite for more channels after the IBA went. It should be remembered that cable companies were also spending money like there was no tomorrow ripping up streets to lay cables throughout the 90s, most stood no chance of recouping that investment under their original business plans and were saved by merging to form companies which were "too big to fail" and the advent of broadband internet.

[James2001]

Even if Sky hadn't happened, chances are someone else would have come along and launched services aimed at the UK on the commercial satellites, free of the regulatory restrictions BSB had, though I guess it's possible BSB themselves may have done it themselves. Those restrictions were always going to be the death of BSB when others would be able to run services with much cheaper and widely available PAL equipment and weren't restricted to 5 (or 10) channels.

Astra wasn't just Sky after all, even in early 1989 there were the likes of MTV, TCC, Lifestyle and Screensport which were nothing to do with Sky (at first anyway, MTV and TCC later ended up behind their paywall) which suggests there'd likely have been a fair amount of English language channels building up on there even if Sky hadn't got involved.

[Neil Jones]

To be honest if Sky hadn't come along I think BSB would have gone bankrupt regardless. Whether they'd have merged with somebody else somewhere else before that, well we'll never know...

Whether the IBA would have re advertised the licences is up for debate, as it would be effectively offering a poisoned chalice.

[Blubatt]

I think BSB's fate was sealed as soon as Astra launched. Didn't matter if everything went to plan, and the service was up in 1989. heck, I would argue that they were doomed by the contract making them have to use D-Mac. Had it all gone to plan, I reckon they'd have survived maybe into 1992-1993, and even then, they'd have probably sold off the other satellite. However, if they were allowed to use PAL to launch the service, and then work on D-MAC channels, I think it would have arrived quicker.

[Humphrey Hacker]

I think BSB's end was a great loss.From what I remember and I was only 11 I deliberately sought out BSB setups in Curry's et al.

[Stooky Bill]

To be honest if Sky hadn't come along I think BSB would have gone bankrupt regardless.  Whether they'd have merged with somebody else somewhere else before that, well we'll never know...

Whether the IBA would have re advertised the licences is up for debate, as it would be effectively offering a poisoned chalice.

Thing is that at the time both Sky and BSB were hemorrhaging money, both needed the merger although BSB needed it more. 

Who else could/would they have merged with? There were only two satellite companies at the time. 

Whether they'd have been readvertised is known, if they were they would have been once the Marcopolo satellites went off air. But they weren't... although the IBA was long gone by then

[Frappé]

I've split the last few pages of BSB discussion out from the original Social Media Gold thread as there seems to be a lot of good discussion going on here on the late days of BSB specifically and it feels a shame for it to be buried under 40 pages.