Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable network operator launched its new digital TV service this week using set-top boxes from Pace Micro Technology. Kabel will use Pace’s DC220* set-top box to provide new digital pay-TV programmes, foreign channel packages and enhanced digital TV services for the first time.
,p>On 6 April it was announced that Kabel Deutschland Group has agreed to buy its three main rivals for a total of E2.7 billion in one of Europe’s largest leveraged buy-outs. KDG connects 10 million households in Germany and is acquiring regional operators in Baden Württemberg, Hessen, and NRW. The combined group will have a customer base of 17 million, the largest in Europe. The deal represents a key step in the consolidation of Germany’s fragmented cable industry. Kabel has been pushing for months to acquire its smaller rivals to gain the critical mass with which to roll out across Europe’s largest TV market. It plans to offer the type of digital television services and multimedia products that are already available in many other European markets. These acquisitions will reunite the cable assets owned until 1999 by Deutsche Telekom. It sold the businesses to meet cartel office objections to its near-monopoly position, and to lower its debt levels.
Roland Steindorf, Kabel’s CEO, said he expected to receive the approval of Germany’s cartel office, in spite of the fact that the office blocked US cable group Liberty Media’s efforts to acquire Deutsche Telekom cable assets in February 2002. The antitrust decision will take at least half a year again leaving the German cable industry’s future uncertain for the time being.