Tele2 has announced that in addition to the sale of its Italian division to Vodaphone, it has also sold its Austrian MVNO operations to Telekom Austria for approximately SEK65 million (€7 million). On June 31 Tele2 had 131,000 mobile customers in Austria bringing in revenues of SEK168 million in 2006, while in H1 this year [...]
Sky ITV bid had private equity partner
October 8, 2007 09.08 Europe/London By
BSkyB’s £940 million share grab in commercial broadcaster ITV may have originally had the backing of a private equity partner. The Guardian reports that the private equity company pulled out at the last minute, leading to an emergency meeting between chief executive James Murdoch and his finance chief Jeremy Darroch. The suggestion is that had [...]
Orion Cable takes control of Primacom
October 5, 2007 13.17 Europe/London By
German cable operator Orion Cable has acquired a majority of the shares in Primacom. Orion now owns, directly and indirectly, 12,743,422 shares, which represents 53.86% of the total ownership. This is partly the result of an agreement with Kabel Deutschland KDG, in which KDG made its shares in Primacom available to Orion in return for [...]
Premiere Star makes its way into cable
October 5, 2007 13.15 Europe/London By
German DTH platform Premiere Star plans to offer its bouquet of channels to cable operators early next year. Talks with a number of Level 4 operators have now started for distribution of the channels on a number of networks. With the offer Premiere Star will compete directly with Eutelsat’s Kabelkiosk bouquet, which is also primarily [...]
Balderton to invest in Top Up TV
October 3, 2007 11.28 Europe/London By
Top Up TV is to explore international opportunities following a new investment in the company by Balterton Captial. As part of the arrangement Balterton partner Tim Bunting will join the board of the DTT pay platform. Balterton was established in June by Benchmark Capital and has already made investments in Bebo, Betfair, MySQL, Alphyra and, [...]
YooMedia cuts its losses
October 1, 2007 12.00 Europe/London By
YooMedia reduced its pre-tax losses in the first half as the interactive TV company benefited from a reduction in interest costs and administration expenses. YooMedia reported a first half pre-tax loss of £3.15m, compared to £491m one year ago. However, revenues also fell to £26.05m from £31.2m in the first half of 2006. In July, [...]
BigBang for BigBand as revenue expectations deflate
September 28, 2007 18.12 Europe/London By
Switched digital video and data head-end equipment vendor Bigband Networks has warned that its Q3 revenues will be in the $35-39 million range,as opposed to the expected $54-58 million. The lowered revenue guidance follows a profit warning issued at the beginning of August when the vendor announced its Q2 and H1 results. As a result of [...]
Orange Dutch mobile and broadband to DT
September 28, 2007 15.01 Europe/London By
The long expected final stage of an extensive asset swap between the French and German incumbent telcos France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, namely the sale of the Dutch Orange division to DT, has been agreed to. Deutsche Telekom will acquire the 1.9 million mobile and 458,000 broadband customer business for a total consideration of €1.33 [...]
Cogeco rules out PT purchase
September 27, 2007 12.56 Europe/London By
Jules Grenier, deputy CEO of Portuguese operator Cabovisao has ruled out the acquisition of rival net PT Multimedia. Jornal de Negocios quoted Grenier has saying the purchase would be too expensive. Cabovisao is owned by Cogeco, Canada’s fourth biggest cable operator. Portugal Telecom is required to spin-off its PTM subsidiary, a move that Grenier said [...]
Apace posts good results
September 27, 2007 12.36 Europe/London By
Apace Media has posted a turnover of £4.6 million (€6.6 million) for H1 2007, or £100,000 more than in the corresponding period last year. At the same time, it had EBITDA of £0.94 million (as opposed to £0.1 million) and a pre-tax profit of £0.72 million (- £68,000). Apace Media is based in the UK [...]
