The Swiss UPC, a cable network subsidiary of the US group Liberty Global, is allowed to take over the Sunrise Communications Group. This was announced yesterday by the Swiss regulator, the Federal Competition Commission (WEKO). The WEKO announced on Friday that it had examined the merger of UPC and Sunrise in detail, especially with regard to a possible joint dominance of the market together with Swisscom.

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Dominance “unlikely” Such a coordination between the two companies seems unlikely, since the merger partners and Swisscom are set up differently, the regulator analyzes, and therefore allows the merger, it says in the communication. WEKO even expects the takeover to stimulate competition.

UPC owner Liberty Global made the purchase offer for Sunrise last August. Sunrise is the second largest telecommunications company in Switzerland. Together with the largest Swiss cable network operator, the new company will generate sales of CHF 3.1 billion (around EUR 2.9 billion) and have 2.1 million mobile phone subscription customers. Paired with UPC’s 1.2 million broadband customers and the combined 1.3 million TV subscribers, the future joint venture will have a market share of around 30 Percent.

The WEKO decision has overcome another hurdle on the way to the merger. In the meantime, more than 96 percent of Sunrise shareholders have offered their shares for sale, Sunrise reported. According to Sunrise, the final completion of the merger is expected in mid-November.

Initially, Sunrise wanted to take over UPC Beginning 2019 the merger should take place before. At that time, the Sunrise management was planning a takeover of UPC and had failed, among other things, due to the resistance of a major shareholder, the German Freenet. In any case, the wedding is now taking place – just the other way around.

The merger of the telecommunications companies makes a lot of sense. The billion-dollar merger of the two telcos not only creates an even more potent competitor to the largely state-owned market leader Swisscom. In addition, UPC is now getting its own cell phone network (with a strong 5G positioning) and Sunrise benefits from UPC’s fiber optic network, which supplies households with Internet at up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbit / s). According to Sunrise, percent of Swiss households should be able to use this speed until next year 90. With DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades, the goal is to increase the speed bit by bit up to 10 Gbit / s.

Liberty Global is an international media group and one of the largest operators of broadband cable networks worldwide. In Europe there are Liberty Global networks in twelve countries, for example under the brands Virgin Media (England), Telenet (Belgium), UPC (Switzerland) and Unitymedia (Germany).

(tiw)