RT\u00c9 and TG4 try to buy sports rights on an all-island basis but Ofcom says that in practical terms that is rarely possible.<\/p>\n
It said: “In many cases international sporting organisations and their agents sell separate packages for the UK and the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n
“Northern Ireland is normally included within the UK package.<\/p>\n
“Bespoke arrangements for NI are not always available commercially. Where an alternative arrangement is available, the additional cost may be disproportionate for relatively small public service broadcasters.”<\/p>\n
In addition, it said the way in which IP addresses are currently managed means geolocation databases cannot reliably distinguish a Northern Ireland user from one in Great Britain.<\/p>\n
Ofcom has suggested that a first step to any solution would be for the British and Irish governments to review their 2010 Memorandum of Understanding which covered cross-border access to digital terrestrial TV.<\/p>\n
That agreement was about making sure BBC channels could be easily received in the Republic and RT\u00c9\/TG4 in Northern Ireland via terrestrial signals.<\/p>\n
Ofcom said a review could assess whether its scope should cover IP-delivered services as well as digital terrestrial TV.<\/p>\n
The economy minister said the geo-blocking of RT\u00c9 content is “completely unacceptable and must be brought to an end”.<\/p>\n
She has asked the governments to start the review suggested by Ofcom.<\/p>\n
“I have written again to the British and Irish governments to seek their engagement and cooperation on resolving this issue once and for all,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RT\u00c9 and TG4 try to buy sports rights on an all-island basis but Ofcom says that in practical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-666617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}