FRANKFURT, Dec 27 (Reuters) - U.S. cable group Liberty Media (nyse: LMCa - news - people) has presented the German cartel office with unchanged proposals for its planned entry into the German cable market, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Thursday.
Liberty's planned purchase of 5.5 billion euros of cable assets from Deutsche Telekom AG has been threatened by concerns from the cartel office which is investigating whether the acquisition of the assets, which cover 60 percent of Germany's cable households, poses a threat to competition.
The office wants Liberty to meet its concerns by upgrading the network to adapt it for multimedia and telephone applications to increase competition in the fixed network segment, which is dominated by Deutsche Telekom.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which said it had obtained a copy of Liberty's 76-page submission to the cartel office, said the U.S. group's plans stuck to proposals for a limited upgrade of the network for telephone connections.
The paper said U.S. investment group Callahan, which bought Deutsche Telekom's cable assets in North Rhine Westphalia and Baden Wuerttemberg, has planned to build up frequency on the network to 862 megahertz so that the network can be used for telephone and Internet services, as well as television.
By contrast, Liberty intends to expand frequency on its assets to just 510 megahertz, arguing that new technology will allow it to offer the same quality telephone and Internet services.
According to the submission, Liberty plans to invest 8.3 billion euros in the network by 2010, not including the price paid to buy the assets.
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