T-Mobile Austria, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom, has agreed to buy the UPC cable business unit in Austria of Liberty Global. The move is intended to help the company compete more effectively with Telekom Austria.
“The acquired cable network will be a perfect match with our best mobile network. It will allow customers to benefit from extended scope of services with fixed and mobile offerings from one source,”
said Srini Gopalan, board member for Europe at Deutsche Telekom.
The deal has been valued at €1.9 billion and is expected to close in the second half of 2018.
Combined, T-Mobile Austria and UPC will have 6.7 million subscribers in mobile and fixed internet, telephony, TV, video and entertainment services. Combined revenue in 2017 would be €1.2 billion.
Analyst Comment
The FT said that this deal may be part of a move to prepare Liberty for a possible merger with Vodafone (Liberty/Vodafone Deal Off the Table). Such a deal has been talked about for some time and Liberty has tied up with Vodafone in the Netherlands. (Reuters: EC Will Approve Vodafone/Liberty Deal). (BR)
