The proposed merger of Bulgaria’s two leading cable operators CableTel and Eurocom could still go ahead.
Speaking exclusively to Broadband TV News, Dimitar Radev, CableTel’s executive director, confirmed that the deal had been put on hold at the beginning of the year due to the failure of Warburg Pincus Private Equity to raise the necessary capital.
He added, however, that both parties still want to do the deal and that it made sense for a number of reasons.
Besides the Bulgarian cable market being highly fragmented, it faced growing competition from the DTH sector and incumbent telco BTC, which is aggressively rolling out ADSL despite not having yet introduced IPTV services.
Radev also stressed that the proposed deal had already received regulatory approval.