[Rdd]

Everything at Liberty Global is up for sale, really. They’ve been divesting operations around the continent and are now much smaller than they were before. Their only wholly owned operations now apart from VM Ireland are UPC Slovakia and the aforementioned Sunrise. Indeed the Sunrise acquisition in Switzerland went totally against the grain of what Liberty has been doing elsewhere, even though it fits what they’ve been doing in Switzerland taking that market in isolation.

Their strategy has been to sell off non-core assets, and partner in the big markets with mobile operators. That’s what they initially announced for Ireland too before they realised it was handing Vodafone a major bargaining hand in any negotiations and backed off from it. After all, eir will never be allowed take over the only rival fixed line telecommunications network in the country, and Three have shown no interest in either fixed line or content anywhere else.

But yeah, Liberty has basically dismantled itself. The Irish operation was moved to be under the U.K. operation and that’s how it ended up with the VM brand having been UPC for a number of years. I have no doubt it would have been rolled into the O2 JV had O2 still a presence in Ireland. Now it’s a bit of an orphan, disconnected from its U.K. parent and having little in common with UPC in Slovakia. Maybe there is still tech sharing that can be done but really it needs new owners that have an interest in bringing the business forward.