The sale of the eight Wallon cable operators to the Ale and Brutélé joint venture has run into problems after the two buyers suddenly lowered their initial bid of €475 million. It was this higher bid that excluded two other interested parties, Telenet and Altice. It is not known how much lower the new bid is.
The current owners, a group of Walloon municipalities and Electrable, claimed the lower bid had stalled the negotiations. The operators involved are Inatel, Idea, Seditel, Igeho, Telelux, Interest/Interost, Simogel and AIEH with together some 634,000 homes connected. The new group would have over 1,237,000 subscribers.
Press reports from Belgium also suggest talks between Flemish operator Telenet and the Interkabel group about possible cooperation on digital television have been resumed. Telenet already serves Interkabel customers with broadband access and telephony, but the Interkabel operators have their own digital TV service called in-Di.
