The company began operations in 1970 as RTÉ Relays, a subsidiary of Raidió Teilifís Éireann. It carried four channels – RTÉ Television, BBC1, BBC2, and Ulster Television. In 1984, the company merged with Dublin Cable Systems, itself the product of a merger of Marlin Cable with Phoenix Relays. In 1986, the Irish government began to allow Irish cable companies to carry non-terrestrial (i.e. satellite) services. In the same year, RTÉ merged all of its cable operations (including two other cable companies, Galway Cablevision and Waterford Cablevision) to form Cablelink Limited.

As Cablelink, the company was Ireland's largest cable company by far, and expanded to a fifteen channel service (plus premium channels) gradually. In 1990, Telecom Éireann acquired 60% of the company from RTÉ. The biggest controversy the company managed to embroil itself during this time was a dispute with British Sky Broadcasting over carriage fees for Sky One and Sky News. This led to the two channels being pulled from the platform from 1992 to 1994. The "return of Bart Simpson" was prematurely announced by Cablelink several times before the channels actually reappeared.

The company also wished to develop broadband services in 1997/1998 but there was an embargo on developing and selling Internet services by the main shareholders, Telecom Éireann, but the management felt if it were developed and a trial launched then there would be no stopping this. To conceal this from the Board, they hired a small Dublin company The Communications Interactive Agency to manage and run the trial. To this end all purchases of equipment and Internet Services were done in their name. At the time they were one of the first to demonstrate VOIP in Ireland as a commercial service which was done by the then managing director Alex Gogan at the Press Launch, by dialling live the Speaking Clock in New York using Net2phone.com service.

At the time they were one of the first companies in Europe to trial and launch Broadband services. What stopped the trial from becoming a full roll out across their network was the purchase by ntl:. It took the company almost four more years to integrate NTL Broadband service.

As these are analogue channels, there is no actual channel number order, but this list shows a typical channel list order from 1 May, 1998.

Receiver

Cablelink receiver

Typically Cablelink receivers were put on a wall near the TV. The cable wire came from outside the home. One could use Cablelink TV services by connecting an aerial cable from the T.V. connection to the back of the TV. Similarly, one could connect a FM receiver to the F.M. Radio connection (sunken into box) to connect an aerial input into a radio listen to radio channels. The Cablelink box mimicked an aerial signal and used very high frequencies (VHF) and ultra-high frequencies (UHF) settings on televisions capable of receiving analogue signals to tune into TV channels. It also mimicked an FM signal to tune into radio stations.

Key

Package	Description
Basic TV service	The basic subscription
All The Movies	Adds Sky Movies and The Disney Channel. Customers who were not subscribed to this package had these channels scrambled.
All The Sports	Adds Sky Sports channels. Customers who were not subscribed to this package had these channels scrambled.
Pay-per-view	Adds pay-per-view channel for 24 hours on date of event. Customers who were not subscribed to this package had this channel scrambled.

Television channels

Channel number	Channel name	Owner or parent company	Notes	Hours	Frequency	Package
1	RTÉ One	Raidió Teilifís Éireann		24 hours	192 MHz	Basic TV service
2	Network 2	Raidió Teilifís Éireann	(Network 2 later became RTÉ Network 2 and later RTÉ2)	24 hours	176 MHz	Basic TV service
3	TnaG	Teilifís na Gaeilge	(TnaG later became TG4)	24 hours	248 MHz	Basic TV service
4	BBC One (Northern Ireland)	BBC		24 hours	216 MHz	Basic TV service
5	BBC Two (Northern Ireland)	BBC		24 hours	224 MHz	Basic TV service
6	UTV	Ulster Television plc		24 hours	200 MHz	Basic TV service
7	Channel 4	Channel Four Television Corporation		24 hours	56 MHz	Basic TV service
8	Nickelodeon	Viacom		06:00-19:00	208 MHz	Basic TV service
	Link	Cablelink	Notice board with Dario G - "Sunchyme" on repeat.	19:00-20:30 (Mon-Thu) 22:15-06:00 (Mon-Thu) 22:15-23:00 (Fri-Sun) 00:30-06:00 (Fri-Sun)
			Euro News - Main evening news broadcast from: ZDF (20:30-21:00), TVE (21:00-21:40), Rai Uno (21:40-22:15)	20:30-22:15
			Dublin Weekend - Dublin Weekend (19:00-19:45 & 23:00-23:45) EUro Week (19:45-20:30 & 23:45-00:30)	19:00-20:30 (Fri-Sun) 23:00-00:30 (Fri-Sun)
9	Sky One	BSkyB		24 hours	232 MHz	Basic TV service
10	NBC Europe	General Electric		24 hours	48 MHz	Basic TV service
11	MTV	Viacom		24 hours	256 MHz	Basic TV service
12	Sky News	BSkyB		24 hours	184 MHz	Basic TV service
13	TV5 Europe	TV5	French language	24 hours	288 MHz	Basic TV service
14	Eurosport	TF1 Group Canal+ Group Havas Images		24 hours	64 MHz	Basic TV service
15	Mosaic	Cablelink	Broadcast mosaic of 12 channels at a time, see Mosaic example. Audio was classical music.	24 hours		Basic TV service
16	The Disney Channel	Disney (50%) Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion (50%)		24 hours	320 MHz	All The Movies
17	Sky Movies Screen 1	BSkyB	(Sky Movies Screen 1 later became Sky MovieMax then Sky Movies Max)	24 hours	280 MHz	All The Movies
18	Sky Movies Screen 2	BSkyB	(Sky Movies Screen 2 later became Sky Premier and Sky Movies Premier)	24 hours	272 MHz	All The Movies
19	Sky Movies Gold	BSkyB	Free channel with All the Movies subscription. (Sky Movies Gold later became Sky Cinema (and Sky Cinema 2) and then Sky Movies Classics before becoming defunct to be able to launch Sky Movies Select and Sky Movies Disney)	24 hours	296 MHz	All The Movies
20	Sky Sports 1	BSkyB		24 hours	264 MHz	All The Sports
21	Sky Sports 2	BSkyB		24 hours	304 MHz	All The Sports
22	Sky Sports 3	BSkyB		24 hours	312 MHz	All The Sports
23	Pay Per View	Cablelink		Occasional	352 MHz	Pay-per-view

Mosaic example

The Mosaic channels switched from showing certain channels as described in the tables below. Channels with a yellow label were included with the basic subscription and channels with a green text label required an additional subscription.

Image: Mosaic example with all basic subscription channels from 21 July, 1996

BBC One	BBC Two	UTV	Channel 4
RTÉ One	Link schedule		Nickelodeon/Link
Network 2	Link schedule		NBC Europe
Sky One	Sky News	MTV	Eurosport

Image: Mosaic example with basic and extra subscription channels from 21 July, 1996.

BBC One	BBC Two	UTV	Channel 4
RTÉ One	Link schedule		Sky Sports 1
Network 2	Link schedule		Sky Sports 2
Sky One	Sky Movies Screen 1	Sky Movies Screen 2	Sky Movies Gold

FM radio channels

Channel number	Channel name	Owner or parent company	Notes	Hours	Frequency	Package
Not applicable	RTÉ Radio 1	Raidió Teilifís Éireann		24 hours	89.4 MHz	(Free with) Basic TV service
	2FM	Raidió Teilifís Éireann	(2FM later became RTÉ 2fm)	24 hours	91.7 MHz
	FM3	Raidió Teilifís Éireann	(FM3 later became RTÉ lyric fm)	06:30-08:00 19:30-01:00	93.9 MHz
	Raidió na Gaeltachta	Raidió Teilifís Éireann	(Raidió na Gaeltachta later become RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta)	08:00-19:30 01:00-06:30	93.9 MHz
	98 FM	Classic Hits .FM		24 hours	99.0 MHz
	FM 104	Consortium of Irish media and entertainment figures		24 hours	104.6 MHz
	Today FM	Radio Ireland Limited		24 hours	100.6 MHz
	BBC Radio 1	BBC		24 hours	99.7 MHz
	BBC Radio 2	BBC		24 hours	90.1 MHz
	BBC Radio 3	BBC		24 hours	92.3 MHz
	BBC Radio 4	BBC		24 hours	96.35 MHz
	BBC Radio 5 Live	BBC		24 hours	95.1 MHz
	BBC World Service	BBC		24 hours	97.1 MHz
	Classic FM	GWR Group		24 hours	101.9 Mhz
	BBC Radio Ulster	BBC		24 hours	94.5 MHz
	Radio Deutsche Welle	Government of Germany		24 hours	95.1 MHz
	World Radio Network	World Radio Network	(World Radio Network later became WRN Broadcast)	24 hours	102.7 MHz