Company

Kabel Deutschland operates in 13 of the 16 states

States of Germany

Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

 (i.e. all but Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...

, North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

 and Hesse

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

). In 2006, of the 15.4 million households passed by their cable the company served 9.6 million, however only one third of these are direct customers of Kabel Deutschland, since especially in large apartment complexes the in-house cable networks are owned by cable service companies or housing associations. According to IFRS rules, in fiscal 2005 / 2006 revenues amounted to €1.012 billion, the EBITDA

EBITDA

EBITDA is an acronym for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is a non-GAAP metric that is measured exactly as stated. All interest, tax, depreciation and amortization entries in the income statement are reversed out from the bottom-line net income...

 amounted to €401.3 million.

Kabel Deutschland was founded in January 1999 by the former German telecom monopolist Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....

 in order to spin off its entire cable TV business as required by regulatory terms. The cable network was established from the mid-1980s on by the German federal post office, and successor of Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Bundespost

Deutsche Bundespost

The Deutsche Bundespost was created in 1947 as a successor to the Reichspost . Between 1947 and 1950 the enterprise was called Deutsche Post...

. Kabel Deutschland was split into nine regional companies, of which three are sold to other investors until 2002. The remaining six are sold in 2003 to the US investment firms Providence Equity Partners

Providence Equity Partners

Providence Equity Partners is a global private equity investment firm focused on media, entertainment, communications and information investments...

, Apax Partners

Apax Partners

Apax Partners LLP is a global private equity and venture capital firm, headquartered in London. The company also operates out of eight other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel-Aviv, Madrid, Stockholm, Milan and Munich. The firm, including its various predecessors, have raised...

 and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners is the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs, focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments globally....

. From February 2006 to September 2010, Kabel Deutschland was majority-owned by Providence Equity Partners

Providence Equity Partners

Providence Equity Partners is a global private equity investment firm focused on media, entertainment, communications and information investments...

.

Products

With a basic plan Kabel Deutschland offers about 30 free-to-air

Free-to-air

Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...

 analogue TV and an equal number of FM

Frequency modulation

In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...

 / VHF

Very high frequency

Very high frequency is the radio frequency range from 30 MHz to 300 MHz. Frequencies immediately below VHF are denoted High frequency , and the next higher frequencies are known as Ultra high frequency...

 radio channels. All analogue TV channels are available in digital DVB-C

DVB-C

DVB-C stands for Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable and it is the DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over cable...

 encoding, too, plus an additional 70 channels not available analogue.

On top of that, about 100 digital pay TV

Pay TV

Pay television, premium television, or premium channels refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by both analog and digital cable and satellite, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial and internet television...

 channels can be ordered, either as a subscription-based service or as pay-per-view

Pay-per-view

Pay-per-view provides a service by which a television audience can purchase events to view via private telecast. The broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it...

. This includes Germany's pay-tv broadcasters Sky Deutschland and Arena

Arena (pay television network)

Arena was a German pay television company that secured the broadcast rights for German "Fußball Bundesliga 2006/2007" . They offer their paid services via satellite....

 as well as Kabel Deutschland's own offerings.

Kabel Deutschland broadcasts from Astra's

SES Astra

Astra is the name for the geostationary communication satellites, both individually and as a group, which are owned and operated by SES S.A., a global satellite operator based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg. The name is sometimes also used to describe the channels broadcasting from these...

 3A

Astra 3A

Astra 3A is a communications satellite owned and operated by SES Astra, launched in 2002 to the Astra 23.5°E orbital slot providing digital television and radio for DTH and cable, multimedia and interactive services, corporate networks, and occasional and other business services to central...

 satellite at 23.5° east

Astra 23.5°E

Astra 23.5°E is the name for the group of communications satellites co-located at the 23.5° east position in the Clarke Belt owned and operated by SES Astra, a subsidiary of SES based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg...

.

Furthermore, Kabel Deutschland offers Internet (Kabel Internet, up to 32 MBit/s downstream and 2000 kBit/s upstream) and telephone services (Kabel Phone).

For historic reasons, Kabel Deutschland cannot offer its products directly to all are connected via Kabel Deutschland's network, since only one third of all viewers are direct customers. In the early 1980s, when the cable network was established, Kabel Deutschland's predecessor Deutsche Bundespost had to leave in-house cables to other companies or the house owners. This turned out to be a significant obstacle since Kabel Deutschland now has to make single contracts with hundreds of small cable operators.