A Cable TV Company Take-Over For 250 Million Dollars

United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC) is planning to take-over Astral Telecom, a Romanian cable television provider estimated at 250 million dollars and having 25% of the market.

UPC is the cable television division of UGC Europe, the European leading company in broadband communications and entertainment with over 10 million subscribers in 11 European countries.
Astral comes second on the Romanian market as Internet provider, after the RDS&RCS group. It was founded in 1993 and provides integrated communication services of cable television, telephony, data transmission and Internet to over 700,000 subscribers.

UPC entered the Romanian market in 1992 with buying local cable communication networks and is currently providing services to 330,000 subscribers.
In 2000, UPC opened a national management center in Bucharest, aiming to explore further development. The process of consolidating the business officially ended in December 2002, when the merger of companies bought by UPC was approved and UPC Romania was born. The new company has over 500 employees in over 40 localities. Some 26% of its shareholders are Romanian entrepreneurs and the rest are investment funds. The revenues of the company last year were 47 million dollars, as compared to 19.9 million dollars in 2002. Astral is a shareholder of TV Sport channel, along RCS&RSD.