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 BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Liberty Global's German unit has set its sights
on business-to-business (B2B) broadband and mobile as part of its
strategy to keep expanding in Europe's biggest cable market, ramping
up the pressure on established telecom players.
Unitymedia KabelBW and Kabel Deutschland - now owned by Vodafone -
have been snatching customers from the incumbent Deutsche Telekom
with their upgraded networks offering broadband for homes and
businesses at speeds that are often five times faster.
Unitymedia already rents mobile capacity from Telefonica Deutschland
but is looking to expand its role as a mobile virtual network
operator (MVNO) by increasingly offering so-called "quad play"
packages combining fixed telephony, TV, broadband and mobile.
However, Lutz Schueler, Unitymedia's CEO, said in an interview with
Reuters that he would not be rushed into offering mobile services by
Telefonica Deutschland's takeover of KPN's E-Plus, creating
Germany's biggest mobile carrier by customers.
"We...in cable believe in consolidation so it's easy to understand
that also our competition is interested in scale and consolidation,"
Schueler said. "Do we think that is impacting our future in a
negative way? No. Are we also committed to mobile? Yes."
The cable operator had 309,800 mobile customers at the end of
December 2014, which compared to 4.395 million subscribers in
Western Europe for Liberty Global, with 3 million in the UK. Germany
is Liberty's third biggest mobile market after the UK and Belgium.
"We have just entered the B2B segment, that is also a growth
potential and of course mobile is a growth potential for us,"
Schueler said. "In the right timing we will put more effort into
it."
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The B2B market is seen by many cable companies as a lucrative
opportunity in fixed broadband and a further way to compete with
traditional telcos.
Liberty Global has been on a shopping spree across Europe over the
past decade, buying up national cable operators and recently
targeting TV assets.
At the same time mobile operators like Vodafone have been buying
into cable to get a foothold in the fixed broadband business,
highlighting the convergence between mobile and fixed line services.
Liberty's CEO Mike Fries told a cable summit in Brussels on
Wednesday that he was committed to increasing the company's
offerings of quad play packages including mobile.
"First we get the growth from fixed broadband, B2B, then also from
mobile. We are not desperate to do everything at the same time,"
Schueler said.
(Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Vincent Baby)
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