Manuel Cubero joins Tele Columbus supervisory board

Cable industry veteran Manuel Cubero del Castillo-Olivares has joined the supervisory board of German cable operator Tele Columbus.

Manuel Cubero

The operator said that its six-member supervisory board was now once again fully staffed following Cubero’s appointment at the company’s extraordinary general meeting.

Cubero is a familiar face on the industry circuit following many years of experience in the German media and telecommunications market. Among other things, he served as chief commercial officer of Vodafone and chairman of the board of Kabel Deutschland Holding – the largest German cable operator that Vodafone ultimately acquired.

In addition to his new role at Tele Columbus AG, he is also a member of the supervisory board of German network operator United Internet AG based in Montabaur in Rheinland-Pfalz and chairman of the shareholders’ council of the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions e.V. in Nuremberg.

Tele Columbus last year secured an equity injection from main shareholder Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners to the tune of €300 million and secured an agreement with its major creditors to provide €1.1 billion worth of financing at par until 2028.

Reporting Q3 financials in November, Tele Columbus said it had grown its broadband base by 7%, with a third of the 10,000 customers signing up in the quarter taking 400Mbps services or above.

With a TV decline offsetting growth in broadband, revenue for the first nine months of the year was flat at €333 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter grew by 5.2% to €49 million.

The operator, which markets services under the PŸUR brand, said that it now reached 2.1 million homes with Gigabit services, including 270,000 households recently upgraded in Munich.