Dutch cable television companies have broken off talks with Enertel, the telecommunications consortium led by state railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen NV and Dutch electricity board SEP (CI No 2,575 ), which hopes to become a fully-fledged competitor to Koniklijke PTT Nederland NV. At a meeting late last month, management of cable company Vecai officially decided to seek an alternative to Enertel and assess the possibility of setting up a number of regional telecommunications companies on their own, reports Het Financieele Dagblad. The split apparently came as a complete surprise for Enertel director Jan Thierry, who told the paper that Vecai’s management has told me nothing of its plans. However, according to industry sources, the split between Enertel and the cable companies has been on the cards for some time. The crux of the matter is that Enertel is sticking to its plans for forming a single national telephone company, while the cable companies are calling for a number of regional telephone concerns. The cable companies’ decision was apparently prompted by Enertel’s plan to conduct a study into the possibilities of setting up a second full scale telecommunications network with US partner and 20% shareholer BellSouth Corp. This, the cable television companies feared, would push back launch of the new phone company even further. Under the original outline deal, the partnership accord between Enertel and the cable companies should have been in place by March.
