Tele Columbus on Thursday announced it has agreed to acquire smaller rival PrimaCom for €711 million.
The deal, which is due to close by the end of the month, brings together Germany’s third and fourth largest cable operators, creating a merged entity serving 2.8 million connected homes.
"This is a transformational transaction for Tele Columbus, strengthening our position as the number three player in the German cable market," said Tele Columbus chief executive Ronny Verhelst.
"Strategically and economically, this is a highly logical combination with significant network overlap between the two businesses and complimentary housing association customer bases," he added.
The merged entity will be better able to compete with leading German cableco Kabel Deutschland and number two operator Liberty Global’s UPC.
The deal marks the latest in a series of M&A moves on the part of Tele Columbus.
Last month the cableco announced that during the course of April and May it had acquired "various small operators and cable networks," adding 30,000 homes in eastern Germany and Lower Saxony.
"The newly acquired networks…are mainly located in the company’s core regions and therefore require little investment, in order to be able to offer the Tele Columbus group’s product spectrum," the operator said at the time. "The holding in Lower Saxony also provides a starting point for additional growth beyond the company’s core regions in East and West Germany."
The deals form part of a broader landscape of consolidation in Germany.
There have been numerous tie-ups between regional cable operators in the country and in recent years cablecos have begun to play a bigger role in the fixed-mobile convergence trend.
Vodafone acquired Kabel Deutschland in 2013 and this year there have been persistent rumours that the telco is considering a deal to merge its operations with those of Liberty Global in certain key markets, including Germany.
