Manuel Kohnstamm, SVP at Liberty Global, told reporters in Amsterdam this week that the company was looking to use other carriers’ wireless infrastructure to offer its own mobile services.
“We are working on a deep MVNO, and we won’t only do that in Austria but in the whole of Europe,” he said. “We are constructing a pan-European MVNO platform.”
Liberty Global hinted towards an increased interest in European mobile services in November last year with the appointment of a managing director for its European mobile operations.
If successful, the European MVNO would put Liberty Global in direct competition with carriers such as the UK’s Vodafone.
As a European cable operator, Liberty Global expects to be able to keep margins high, because the company runs one billing system, one back office and one backhaul, which connects the core network to the smaller sub-networks, Kohnstamm explained.
The MVNO will reportedly be initially introduced in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and the UK, but Kohnstamm did not give a launch date.
In January this year, Liberty Global finalised its acquisition of Dutch cable operator Ziggo for approximately €10 billion.
