Elco van Groningen

Liberty Global, the cable company controlled by billionaire John Malone, plans to offer mobile phone services to customers throughout Europe, taking on carriers such as the UK’s Vodafone Group.

Liberty Global will put together a so-called mobile virtual network operator system, or MVNO, the name given to companies that use other carriers’ wireless infrastructure for their own mobile services, Senior Vice President Manuel Kohnstamm said.

“We’re working on a deep MVNO, and we don’t only do that in Austria but in the whole of Europe,” Kohnstamm said. “We’re constructing a pan-European MVNO platform.”