Liberty Global: a growing force

Liberty Global: a growing force

Liberty Global is the world’s largest international TV and broadband company, with 25 million customers and operations in more than 30 countries across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The wholesale executive team shares with us their plans for the future and how their customers will benefit from their continued expansion

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Ekrem Köylüer, VP Wholesale Data Services

Q. Liberty Global is a very dynamic player that keeps growing - how does that benefit your customers?

Liberty Global has been expanding extensively over the past years by benefitting from the consolidation of the cable operator ecosystem throughout Europe, with one of our latest acquisitions being Multimedia Polska in Poland.

In addition, we are continuing to invest into expanding our network and footprint and are planning to bring Gigabit internet speed to 11 European countries in which we operate through our GIGA World initiative. Liberty Global is already reaching more than 250,000 B2B buildings within Europe with its own fiber. I think this is rather unique.

Maybe more importantly, our wholesale customers benefit not only from our continued network expansion in Europe, but also from our extended Caribbean pan-regional network, achieved through our LiLAC group, which gives us a total on-net reach to 41 countries.

Q. Two of the benefits you mention are more reach and scale. Can you expand on that?

As I mentioned, we have an extensive and unique fibre network, with cable in the ground. But more importantly in my view, we capitalise on this leading-edge network to offer MEF 2.0 certified Carrier Ethernet throughout 8 European countries with the same product and a single Service Level Agreement and Master Service Agreement. Customers can therefore benefit from a pan-European Ethernet service, while having to interact with only one carrier and one point of contact. We are working as one.

Q. What services are on your roadmap?

We currently focus on offering MEF 2.0 Carrier Ethernet, optical wavelengths up to 100 Gbit/s, IP Transit and Data Interconnect. To strengthen this offering, we are planning to launch our new wholesale portal in the summer 2017. This portal will give our customers the ability to place, track and manage their orders in 8 countries across Europe in real time.

Tobias Stiepak, VP Wholesale Voice Services

Q. How does Liberty Global differentiate from other wholesalers?

Liberty Global is everything but a traditional voice wholesaler, as it is the largest cable operator outside of the US and benefits from one of the most extensive European and Caribbean footprint with direct on-net high quality access to 41 countries. It also benefits from a huge consumer and enterprise retail customer base in both regions. 

Our objective is therefore to offer the best possible quality to our own customers, and in return, this value naturally extends to our wholesale customers base.

Q. What is your plan to continue growing your wholesale voice business?

Firstly, we are expanding our wholesale voice offering to include the full A-Z list of destinations and this obviously includes extending our offering to the pan-Caribbean region via C&W Networks.

We are also working on aligning our portfolio of services across our entire footprint, to ensure we offer the highest quality terminations to our fixed and mobile customers. 

Q. What is the plan for a cooperation with the newly acquired C&W?

Soon after the C&W acquisition, we succeeded in establishing an NGN interconnect between our two networks and started exchanging retail and wholesale traffic. This meant that both our retail and wholesale customers could benefit from this great acquisition.

The next step will be to align the product offering and combine the sales approach across the two regions. Creating an unmatched pan-Europe/Caribbean wholesale voice offering.

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