Televisa, Cablemas decision seen soon

By Cyntia Barrera Diaz and Tomas Sarmiento

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's anti-trust watchdog expects to decide on broadcaster Televisa's planned acquisition of Cablemas, one of the country's biggest cable companies, in no more than four weeks.

"It should not take us a long time. We are talking of no more than a month," Eduardo Perez Motta, head of Mexico's Federal Competition Commission, told the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit on Monday.

Televisa has an option to buy a 49 percent stake in Cablemas, but it has to meet a number of requirements, including sharing its content with smaller regional competitors, if it wants the go-ahead from competition authorities.

Televisa (TV.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (TLVACPO.MX: Quote, Profile, Research) has been expanding from its core broadcasting business in a bid to grow its revenue base. It has its eyes on the "triple play" market, which allows companies to provide cable television, phone services and the Internet through one single broadband link.

The company, the world's leading producer of Spanish-language content, had previously bought another cable company based in the northern city of Monterrey, TVI. Televisa's Cablevision cable unit only operates in the Mexico City area.

Perez Motta said his team has held regular meetings with Televisa for nearly a year in the hope of reaching a final decision in a market that lacks solid regulation.

"HEADACHE"

"What did we have to do? Well, ask Televisa that if it wanted to tap this market it had to offer content on a nondiscriminatory basis," he said.