Ziggo

History

The company is the result of the merger between Multikabel, @Home Network, and Casema and launched officially on 16 May 2008. Later followed by a merger with UPC Nederland in the first quarter of 2015, at that time the second largest cable company in the Netherlands. It kept the brand name Ziggo. Its main competitors are KPN and CanalDigitaal.

Most of the share capital was up to 2012 held by holding companies of two private equity firms: Cinven and Warburg Pincus.

On 21 March 2012, Ziggo was listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange and later incorporated into the midcap equity AMX index. Additionally, there are options traded on the Ziggo share.

Cinven and Warburg Pincus started to reduce their stake in Ziggo and exited Ziggo in April 2013.

In March 2013 Liberty Global acquired a 12.65% stake in Ziggo. This increased to 15% in April and 28.5% in July. On 27 January 2014 Liberty Global announced that it would be acquiring all remaining shares in Ziggo for € 10 billion. The takeover was subject to regulatory approval and was expected to close by the second quarter of 2014, when Ziggo was expected to merge with UPC Nederland. In May 2014 the European Commission announced opening an in-depth investigation to assess whether the proposed acquisition of Ziggo by Liberty Global is in line with the EU Merger Regulation. The opening of an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation. In November 2014 Liberty Global took over Ziggo. In December 2014 the shares of Ziggo N.V. were delisted from Euronext Amsterdam as Ziggo was converted into the Dutch private limited company (besloten vennootschap) Ziggo Holding B.V. On 5 January 2015 Ziggo started to harmonize its cable network with the UPC Nederland cable network. The name UPC was finally phased out in favor of Ziggo on 13 April 2015.

On 15 February 2016, British telecommunications company Vodafone announced the merger of their Dutch operations Vodafone Netherlands with Liberty Global, the owner of Ziggo. The deal was closed on 31 December, creating a new parent company for both Ziggo and Vodafone, called VodafoneZiggo, with a 50/50 joint ownership by Liberty Global and Vodafone.

Cable television

In 2014 the Ziggo cable network passed 6.983 million homes in the Netherlands.

Ziggo offers analog and digital cable television to 4.089 million subscribers of which 3.321 million watch digital. In recent years the number of analogue channels has been reduced to make more bandwidth available for digital HD channels.

Analogue and digital

Ziggo provides about 200 television channels including about 55 in HD and also more than 100 radio channels, DVR service, video-on-demand content, catch-up TV from public television broadcasters and commercial television stations and interactive television using the DVB-C specification. At the moment Ziggo uses both the Nagravision and Irdeto conditional access system. Nevertheless, about 40 TV channels and also 40 radio channels are transmitted in clear (unencrypted).

Basic service is called Kabel TV and includes both analogue and digital channels, consists of about 40 digital (including 5 HD) and 25 analogue television channels, as well as 40 digital radio channels. It consists of all the major Dutch networks and some of the main networks of neighbouring countries. Additional TV and radio channels are available through "TV Standard", "Movies & Series XL" and premium packages. Every additional package comes with Stingray Music which offers 35 additional radio channels, as well as interactive video on demand services.

High-definition

Ziggo offers about 55 HD channels including National Geographic Channel HD, Discovery HD & History HD. Also including premium film and sport services such as Film1 HD, Fox Sports HD and Ziggo Sport Totaal HD. The rest are part of basic service.

On 4 July 2009 the Dutch public broadcaster NPO started simulcasting NPO 1, NPO 2, and NPO 3 in 1080i high-definition. These public HD channels are part of basic service.

In the early stages most of the programming consisted of upscaled versions of their SD counterparts. In time more programs became available in HD.

Technology

The digital television signal is transmitted in the DVB-C standard. From 1 March, 2017 on all standard-definition channels will change from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 in the upcoming months. Most high-definition channels are encoded in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Customers can buy or rent a certified set-top box or Integrated Digital Television with embedded CA. Additionally customers can buy any television or set-top box with a DVB-C tuner for the free-to-cable basic subscription and optionally included by CI+ support with a Ziggo compatible conditional-access module for supplemental packages.

Broadband Internet

As of December 2015, Ziggo has 3.101 million broadband Internet access subscribers.

With the introduction of EuroDOCSIS 3.0 across the broadband Internet network download speeds have been increased up to 200 Mbit/s except in areas where the network has not been adapted to the EuroDOCSIS 3.0 standard. The latest general speed increase was in March 2015.

Telephony

As of December 2015, Ziggo has 2.538 million subscribers to their land-line telephone services. It also offers a virtual mobile phone service.

Triple play

At the end of 2015 Ziggo had 2.478 million triple play subscribers which have a cable television, broadband internet and telephone service bundle.