“Something like 40% of our growth comes from this country,” Mike Fries told the audience at the opening session of this year’s TV Summit at ANGA COM.
Following the acquisition of Virgin Media in the UK, which will be closed this Friday, Liberty Global has “plenty of money left for Germany.” Fries said the Virgin deal was a rational one “Today it is very rational to invest in the UK, but ten years ago the situation was different.”
Although the operator is active in 13 countries, most of the income is generated by the networks in five countries, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Germany is top priority for the company. germany is the engine of growth. “There is still a relative low penetration of broadband with relatively low prices for broadband and digital tv. So Deutsche Telekom is investing in broadband, we are investing.”
LGI’s German subsidiary UnitymediaKabelBW serves three states and 40% of the total population, and Fries added that acquiring Kabel Deutschland “is always interesting to us.”
In the past the German regulator stopped the main cable networks in the country from having a single owner. As a result, “the cable industry is the only industry that doesn’t have a nationwide presence. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, that cable has been forced into fragmentation. It doesn’t make sense for consumers, for the content providers. Consumers are the ones that would win if the industry is consolidated.”
