Telekom Serbia has bought two more cable operators – Radijus Vektor and AVcom – and is in talks to take over five additional smaller ones.
Telekom Serbia Group’s Internet and Multimedia Coordinator and m:tel Director, Vladimir Lucic said this in an interview for the Blic daily, adding that the company expected those acquisitions to be completed in the first quarter of this year.
According to Lucic, the acquisitions were a prerequisite for the realization of the Million Plus development strategy, which should enable the state owned telecommunications company to gain more than one million TV and internet subscribers.
The latest move has added 120,000 users to Telekom’s user database. Asked if the latest acquisition could lead to a public uproar like the recent acquisition of Kopernikus, Lucic said he “doesn’t know why only our acquisitions, and not those of the competition, lead to an uproar.”
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“We decided to put an end to Telekom lagging behind, i.e. to occupy a position that the national operator should have, which is the leading position,” said Lucic, adding that Telekom was financed from its own funds.
“We are not financing these acquisitions with people’s money, but from our own profit since we have been extremely profitable for the last ten years,” Lucic underlined.
According to him, compared to all other cable operators, including SBB, Telekom is the most profitable, but also has the biggest number of employees, more than all mobile and cable operators combined.
“By acquiring these cable operators, we increased the number of (Telekom) TV subscribers in Serbia by more than 50 percent in five months, so now we have over 700,000,” he said, adding that this gave the company the strength to invest more in content, and launch the Superstar channel.
Lucic went on to say that Telekom had fewer TV subscribers because cable operators created their own cartel and a parallel network, as well as that they “did not go after each other, but banded together against Telekom.”
“Buying TV stations is not a part of the Million Plus project,” Lucic said, and added that “as is the case with all major companies in the world, the focus will be on multimedia, because the Internet will be the only secure source of income for the next 50 years.”
“Our goal is to prove not only that we can compete with the existing competition and be a leader in internet and television services, but also stand shoulder to shoulder with large companies in terms of the provision of digital services,” Lucic concluded.
(Politika, 06.01.2019)
http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/419696/Telekom-kupio-jos-dva-kablovska-operatora
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