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June 10, 2011
Austria's incumbent telco, Telekom Austria (TAG) has bought Croatia's largest cable TV provider, B.Net. TAG paid Austrian energy company BEWAG $93m to acquire B.net via its Croatian subsidiary, Vipnet, a company providing mobile telephony and mobile internet.
With over 100,000 TV subscribers, B.net accounts for over 70 per cent of Croatian cable TV. The operator provides triple-play services, including digital TV, across the country.
In Austria TAG offers an IPTV service, aon TV, which at the end of the first quarter 2011 had 165,000 TV subscribers. It also has an IPTV platform in Bulgaria, and telecoms interests in Bulgaria, Belarus, Serbia, Slovenia and Macedonia.
The pay TV leader is Deutsche Telekom-owned Hrvatski Telekom, which offers an IPTV service called MaxTV, MaxTV Sat (launched last year) and some cable TV services. At the end of March 2010, HT reported 299,000 residential TV subscribers. HT also operates as the incumbent telco, and reported 629,000 DSL broadband connections at YE 2010. B.Net has been steadily growing its broadband customer base since launching services over cable in 2007, and reported 50,000 broadband connections in Q4 2010.
In order to improve its competitiveness against IPTV, B.net may need to extend its TV service reach. The company may actually follow Max TV by launching a satellite service. Many other incumbent telcos in CEE have combined IPTV with satellite: TP SA, Romtelecom, DT-owned Slovak Telekom and T-Home. Instead of launching a new platform, B.net could also acquire Total TV, with which it is currently co-operating. After a recent franchise deal, B.net has taken over the distribution of Total TV in Croatia.
Tags:
Companies: Telekom Austria B.Net BEWAG Vipnet Mobiltel Megalan Spektrumnet Romtelecom TP SA Slovak Telecom T-Home MaxTV Hrvatski Telekom Total TV
