To conceal this from the Board, they hired a small Dublin company The Communications Interactive Agency to manage and run the trial.

In 1999, as part of the privatisation of Eircom, the Government put pressure on the shareholders of Cablelink to sell the company.

Part of the reason was that Eircom was regarded by some as a "spoiler shareholder" in Cablelink, refusing to allow the company to compete in the voice telephony market that it dominated.

The company was put up for auction, with bidders including Esat Telecom Group, NTL, and UPC, as well as CMI Cable and Irish Multichannel.

The biggest crisis erupted in early 2001, when NTL stopped selling its direct telephony and high-speed internet services, and halted the roll out of its upgraded hybrid fibre coax network.

Despite NTL Ireland turning a profit as a result of its expected merger with Telewest, the Irish assets were then considered non-core.

MS Irish Cable Holdings, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, held the stake on UGC's behalf, until the deal received regulatory clearance.

However a Competition Authority investigation into the proposed resale of the company to Liberty Global Europe took place.

On 4 November 2005 it was announced the Competition Authority had cleared the deal, subject to the appointment of an independent director to the board of UPC Ireland and restrictions on the influence of John C. Malone on the running of the Irish business.

After a period branded as "Chorus NTL", the company carried out an extensive upgrade of the cable television networks it acquired, then re-launched as UPC Ireland.

On 3 July 2006 it was reported on RTÉ News that as part of the merger, up to 350 jobs would be lost, including the closure of NTL's call centre in Waterford.

In a Sunday Business Post article on 11 February 2007, UPC Ireland's marketing manager revealed that the rebrand was due to take place no later than May 2007.