Telekom Austria acquires Croatian cable operator B.net

Telekom Austria has acquired a 100 per cent stake in Croatia’s largest cable operator B.net for €93m through its local subsidiary Vipnet, a provider of mobile telephony services.

The acquisition will enable Vipnet to position itself as a convergence services provider on the Croatian market, according to Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO of Telekom Austria. B.net’s cable network is based on advanced DOCSIS 3.0 technology and although current speeds max out at 32 Mbps, the operator can increase this to 400Mbps at a later date.

B.net currently has over 55,000 subscribers to its broadband services (located mostly in the main Croatian urban centres), giving a 7 per cent share of the Croatian broadband market. Its network passes around 266,000 homes, corresponding to roughly 18 per cent of total Croatian households.

The transaction is expected to be completed by Telekom Austria in the second half of this year, subject to approval by the Croatian competition authority.