While we have yet to see the company’s first quarter results, the year so far has undoubtedly been a busy one for Liberty Global in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Perhaps the most important development to date was the decision to restructure its operations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Implemented at the beginning of this month, it saw the two merged into a single operator, thereby creating Liberty’s second largest unit in the region after Poland. All told, the new entity covers nearly 2million households, its 1 million customers receiving 1.6 million services.
Alongside the merger we saw Martin Miller, the former head of UPC Broadband Slovakia, take charge of the new operation, albeit on a temporary basis. Meanwhile, Frans-Willem de Kloet, until then the CEO of UPC Czech, became the new CEO of UPC Polska, taking over an important position that had been vacant for a few months.
Another important development, reported by Broadband TV News in February, was UPC Romania’s decision to invest €15 million more in 2016 than the €35 million it had done last year. Robert Redeleanu, the company’s general manager, said that it would be spent mostly on network expansion, helping it reach an additional 300,000 homes.
Importantly, he also said that UPC Romania remained interested in further acquisitions – as indeed are its two main competitors RCS&RDS and Telekom Romania – and that these would be funded directly by the group rather than the budget.
We have also seen recent announcements, from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, about improvements to the Horizon Go mobile TV service. In addition, we have had statistical glimpses of just how well some services are doing.
In the Czech Republic, for instance, UPC became the leading provider of HD services, the 52 on offer since last month being more than that distributed by any other platform in the country. In Hungary, we learned only this week that UPC’s mobile telephony service has secured 40,000 customers in the first year since its launch.
All in all, it seems to have been a positive start for Liberty Global in CEE and we await its Q1 results with interest.
