YouSee

Background

In 1963, the Danish regional telephone company Jydsk Telefon found an interest in cable television, but only in 1985 did the Folketing give permission for the regional companies to build a nationwide cable TV infrastructure. In November 1990, the Folketing passed a law that paved the way for a nationwide Danish telecom. The company was named Tele Danmark and was the parent company for the existing regional companies (KTAS, Jydsk Telefon, Tele Sønderjylland, Fyns Telefon, and Rigstelefonen).

In 1995, the regional companies were merged into Tele Danmark, and the first nationwide cable TV company, Tele Danmark Kabel TV was created. Five years later, in 2000, Tele Danmark changed its name to TDC, and thus Tele Danmark Kabel TV became TDC Kabel TV. In early 2001 TDC Kabel TV changed its brand name to OnCable as a way for consumers to know they could get more than just TV. This brand name was scrapped in October the following year, reverting back to TDC Kabel TV.

In 2007, TDC folded its subsidiaries back into the parent company with the exception of TDC Kabel TV, which continued as an independent legal identity. Later in the year, on 1 October 2007, TDC Kabel TV changed its name to YouSee to once again signal a focus on more than just TV.

On 1 July 2016 the TDC consumer business was merged with YouSee, migrating the entire TDC customer base of IPTV, broadband and mobile consumers to YouSee. The mobile phone network continues to use the 'TDC' name, as its built by TDC Group instead of YouSee.

YouSee Broadband

YouSee has offered internet via cable television since building a return path (using DOCSIS) on the network in the years 2000-2002. It had previously been marketed under the name Webspeed, but was re-branded as YouSee Broadband in 2007.

Today YouSee continues to serve broadband to consumers either via coaxial cable, Optical fiber or through the old cobber telephone lines (DSL).

Prior to April 2016 costumers had to subscribe to at least the basic TV channel package to get broadband over cable. This requirement was removed after parent company TDC was forced - by the authorities - to allow other broadband companies to serve broadband to consumers using the TDC/YouSee infrastructure without the consumer having to have a TV package from YouSee.

In 2012 YouSee began offering 100 Mbit/s download speeds. Four years later, in 2016, 300 Mbit/s was introduced as the top download speed. Also in 2016, YouSee started a nationwide upgrade of their broadband infrastructure in a partnership with Huawei. The upgrade enables gigabit download speeds by deploying DOCSIS 3.1 nationwide, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2017. Later in 2016 an upgrade of the cobber broadband network was announced in partnership with Nokia enabling up to 300 Mbit/s speeds (using Vplus) depending on the distance between the household and the nearest cabinet.

Current internet tiers

As of 16 March 2017:

Speeds are given in megabits per second, where 1 megabit = 0.125 megabytes = 125000 bytes.

Cable modems

Current and previous cable modems from YouSee

YouSee TV

On 15 September 2009 YouSee decided to unencrypt its digital TV distribution, under the marketing name YouSee Clear. However, a parallel analogue distribution was maintained for customers with TV sets that were unable to receive digital signals. At the time YouSee distributed channels in both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 but in April 2013, YouSee stopped this simulcasting to focus on MPEG-4 only. The name YouSee Clear was used until 1 July 2014 were it was renamed YouSee Tv.

The analogue TV signal was finally switched off on February 9, 2016. In early 2017, YouSee switched off their cable radio services, which had been used to redistribute several Danish and foreign FM radio stations.

Today, YouSee broadcasts digital television over coaxial cable and optical fiber using DVB-C and MPEG-4. YouSee also offers IPTV over coaxial cable, optical fiber and cobber telephone cables.

The main products are the three packages: Basic, Medium and Full. Extra channels can be bought separately if the consumer subscribes to at least the basic package.

As of March 2017, YouSee offers 103 channels, of which 66 are in HD.

Set-top boxes

The newest set-top box is a YouSee branded Humax set-up box. It was released on 18 April 2016.

Current and former set-top boxes:

Current channel packages

As of January 2017.

YouSee Mobile

Parent company TDC had in 2011 acquired the mobile virtual network operator Onfone which at the time were using the network of Telenor. After the acquisition, Onfone switched to the TDC mobile network, but were kept as a separate brand until December 2013 where Onfone were re-branded as YouSee Mobile.

The YouSee Mobile service uses the network of parent company, TDC Group. This network covers 99.5% of Denmark using 2G, 3G and 4G.

It was announced in September 2013 that Huawei were to do a complete overhaul of the 3G and 4G network infrastructure starting on 1 March 2014 and lasting 6 years.

YouSee Mobile Broadband

Using the 3G and 4G network of parent company TDC, YouSee offers mobile broadband with included data ranging from 10 GB to 500 GB.

YouSee Telephony

TDC Kabel TV started offering IP telephony in 2005 branding it Cabletalk. This was re-branded as YouSee Telefoni in 2007 as part of the overall YouSee name change.

YouSee continues to offer fixed telephony services using IP as well as traditional landline.

Retail stores

YouSee now operates 44 stores around the country, after a re-branding of TDC stores to the YouSee brand began in March 2016.

YouBio

With the prospect of facing competition from both Netflix and HBO when they announced their streaming services would be available in Denmark late 2012, YouSee announced plans for their own upcoming streaming service. It would be called YouBio (a play on the Danish word for cinema, biograf), and it launched on 7 December 2012.

The service was available as an app on Smart TVs from LG, Samsung, on Android, and iOS. Costumers could also buy a separate digital media player YouBio Boks which YouSee had developed.

In June 2014 TDC announced YouBio would become a movie rental service as they couldn't compete with Netflix who had been more successful than TDC had imagined. Later in the year YouBio was shut down completely.

YouSee Play

YouSee Play was launched on 6 October 2014 as the future of cable tv. It made it possible for costumers to watch their tv channel subscriptions on smartphones, smart TVs, tablets and computers.

Less than a year later, on 25 August 2015 YouSee Play was shut down, although the features was carried over to the existing main YouSee TV product.

YouSee Wifi-Spot

In March 2014, a new service called YouSee Wifi-Spot was launched. The idea was to create Wifi hotspots around the country by enabling a second Wifi broadcast on YouSee cable modems. A further 10 Mbit/s speed was added on to participating customers bandwidth as a measure to not have the public wifi hotspot affect the customers own private wifi.

The service was shut down by the end of the month, on 31 March 2014, following incidents of people's files and devices being accessed via security breaches between the public wifi hotspot and the customers own private wifi.