Friday May 21, 12:02 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
UPC Completes Deal With Siemens for Bratislava Cable TV System
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 1999--United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC)(NASDAQ:UPCOY - news) today announced that it has completed the purchase of Siemens' 95.63% interest in SKT s.r.o., the company that owns and operates the cable TV system in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. Completion of the deal, which was announced in March, was subject to regulatory approval, which has now been received. A purchase price of USD$ 41 million (Euro 37 million) was paid for this transaction which will see UPC become the largest cable operator in the Slovak Republic.
SKT is already the largest provider of cable television services in the Slovak Republic with approximately 156,000 subscribers in Bratislava and five other Slovakian cities. UPC will operate SKT in conjunction with its existing 27,000 subscribers in the country. The network has been built by Siemens to 860 Mhz, Europe's highest standard. UPC plans to add high speed Internet access and e-commerce services through chello broadband, UPC's Internet portal and service provider, later this year.
Mark Schneider, chairman and CEO of UPC, commented: ''The completion of the purchase of SKT is an important step for UPC as we seek to extend our network in Central and Eastern Europe. The demand for voice, data and cable TV services is growing rapidly in this region and UPC intends to play a leading roll in introducing these, services to Eastern European residential and business customers.''
Nimrod Kovaks, managing director of UPC in Eastern Europe, added: ''UPC now has over 750,000 subscribers in the Central and Eastern European region. Bratislava is very close to one of our fibre distribution nodes in Austria, providing easy connectivity for SKT's subscribers to UPC's systems and cable services throughout the rest of Europe.''
Regards
Neil |
