THE BROADCASTING Authority of Ireland was directed this week, by Minister for Communications Pat Carey to see if anyone is willing to provide content for the digital terrestrial television (DTT) service that is due to start transmitting from May.

It’s hard to imagine that there will be a queue around the block for this one.

DTT has been in the offing for several years. The old Broadcasting Commission of Ireland ran an elaborate process that resulted in Denis O’Brien’s Boxer consortium getting the nod to run a commercial service in parallel to the terrestrial one that RTÉ will operate.

That was before the economy went splat and subsequent fruitless negotiations with RTÉ, which has built the transmission network, resulted in O’Brien walking away from the project.

A consortium involving cable TV operator UPC also passed.

Eircom then sought to fill the void as a means of being able to offer customers a triple-play of phone, broadband and TV.

UPC is currently eating Eircom’s lunch, thanks to its investment in triple play.

Eircom eventually gave up, citing excessive financial demands from RTÉ as the reason for it pulling the plug.

Late last year, Eircom chief Paul Donovan told me that it was now too late for a commercial DTT service to be set up, regardless of the cost.

UPC sources tell me that the company is unlikely to be interested in a new process.

And O2 Ireland’s new boss Stephen Shurrock told me this week that his company would have no interest in DTT, even though triple-play is the holy grail in terms of the residential phone market.

Might Sky be interested? This seems unlikely, given that it has its own satellite platform, with more than 630,000 subscribers.

DTT is most likely to be popular in rural areas, where cable is generally not available and customers might prefer a cheaper option to Sky.

The authority has until April to report back to the Minister on its trawl of the market.

By then, a new minister will be in place.

Given the state of the economy and the strong market shares already held by UPC and Sky, making a case for a commercial DTT service here won’t be easy.

We might just have to make do with a handful of terrestrial channels on DTT instead.