Kabel Deutschland (KDG), Germany's largest MSO that is currently considering its options between sale and IPO, has used the occasion of its results announcement to reject outright the demands of Deutsche Telekom for regulation of the cable market to open up the networks to competitors.

KDG pointed to ADSL's dominance in the market for fast Internet access, outlining that cable operators currently only had a 10 per cent market share in the broadband market. “In our view, this doesn't justify regulation, the more so as regulation both in German and EU law is rightly tied to the existence of market domination.”

Telekom's CEO René Obermann said recently cable operators should be forced to make their infrastructure accessible to third-party companies. As ADSL market leader, Telekom has to grant competitors access to its broadband network with the conditions being set by Bundesnetzagentur.

Meanwhile KDG said it added another 542,000 revenue generating units in the year to December 31, 2009. Announcing its third quarter and nine-month financials for the quarter ending December 31, 2009, KDG said total quarterly revenues had grown by 8% to E378.8 million following an increase in subscription revenues of 87.6%. Subscriptions now account for 87.6% of total revenues with the average of KDG's 8.9 million subscribers now taking 1.33 RGUs as opposed to 1.25 in December 2008.

Premium TV RGUs grew by another 99,000 units on the year and now stand at 1,039,000.

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