Liberty Global’s Belgian arm, Telenet, is buy local mobile network operator Base from Dutch group KPN for 1.3 billion euros.<br /><br /> For Liberty, Europe’s biggest cable firm, it’s a departure from its strategy of renting capacity from its rivals rather than buying or building its own mobile phone networks.<br /><br /> However, Telenet says the deal will create a much stronger operator in Belgium’s mobile market as fixed and mobile telecom services converge, with the combined company having estimated sales of 2.4 billion euros.<br /><br /> Telenet has been one of the winners of a 2012 law that limited the maximum duration of Belgian telecoms service contracts to six months. That led many mobile users to switch operators, causing prices to tumble.<br /><br /> The group, which is mainly active in the Dutch-speaking north of the country, has about 900,000 mobile subscribers, while Base has 3.3 million.<br /><br /> Analysts expect the merger of Telenet and Base to reduce competition in the Belgian market and create two similar sized mo
