PrimaCom eyes Tele Columbus, Deutsche Telekabel

German regional cable operator PrimaCom has made bids for the Berlin assets of Tele Columbus and for smaller cableco Deutsche Telekabel, the company’s managing director and supervisory board member, Wolf Waschkuhn, told Reuters. The move by PrimaCom, which is seeking an active role in the consolidation of the German cable market, follows Kabel Deutschland’s unsuccessful attempt at acquiring indebted Tele Columbus earlier this year, which was blocked by the antitrust regulator on competition grounds. Last week it was reported that several financial investors, including private equity firms Cinven Group and CVC Capital Partners, were in talks to buy Tele Columbus, although Waschkuhn believes that PrimaCom is a more attractive potential partner: ‘In contrast to financial sponsors we can act as a strategic partner and reap synergies,’ he is quoted as saying. Tele Columbus provides regional cable TV, broadband internet access and voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) telephony services to over two million connected households in the Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern regions, notes TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, while PrimaCom serves around one million homes in small to medium-sized cities in 15 states.