Stature of Liberty questioned by German authorities

The sale of Deutsche Telekom's cable assets won't be settled for another two months. Lawyers for Liberty Media, the company headed by US cable legend John Malone, yesterday negotiated more time to satisfy the terms of the German Cartel Office.

Liberty owns 25 per cent of Telewest and 19 per cent of BSkyB in the UK, as well as a share of pan-European cable player UPC and 22 per cent of Kirch PayTV, also in Germany. However, getting hold of Telekom's cable infrastructure would arguably be its biggest coup.

In addition to providing media content and telephony, analysts have identified upgrading the network for broadband internet access as a big opportunity. At the moment cable modem services to compete with DSL - mostly Telekom's T-DSL flavour - are non-existent in the country, unlike in most of the rest of western Europe and North America

According to reports, the competition authorities are looking for assurances from Liberty over a timetable for broadband cable, rather than have the company concentrate on bundling TV content.

The sale of Telekom's cable network is priced at $4.9bn, although there are other companies waiting in the wings with counter-offers should Liberty's bid fail.