Warsaw, Poland -- Bresnan Communications last week closed
its $309.7 million sale of cable operations in Poland to electrical-engineering and
telecommunications firm Elektrim Kable Polskie S.A.
Bresnan Communications Poland LLC owned stakes in Polish
cable operations serving 360,000 subscribers. The biggest operation, Aster City Cable,
serves 290,000 subscribers here, and it has an agreement with France's Canal Plus S.A. to
develop a Polish digital direct-to-home platform.
The sale of the Polish assets ends Bresnan's five-year
foray into international cable. Last year, it sold its Chilean investments, which included
a stake in Metropolis Intercom, one of that country's two main MSOs.
An Elektrim subsidiary had outbid BCP for a license to
provide telephony in Warsaw, and it then approached Bresnan about selling the cable
operations.
After cutting that deal in March, White Plains, N.Y.-based
MSO Bresnan agreed to sell its cable operations with 640,000 subscribers in the United
States to Charter Communications.
Bresnan officials said chairman William Bresnan and his
son, Daniel, who headed up Bresnan's international operations, were considering getting
back into international cable, but they had no specific deals lined up.
Bresnan Communications had been a player in the
international cable market for about five years with its systems in Poland and Chile.
Elektrim paid for the Bresnan deal with the proceeds of a
recent bond issue in Europe and the United States.
