Consolidation rippled across Europe during the holiday break, with Liberty Global’s Belgian operator Telenet acquiring the operations of Altice’s SFR in Belgium and Luxembourg for $418m. The deal significantly boosts Telenet’s cable operations, but there is a looming presence of a potential IPO (initial public offering), concerning Altice USA across the pond in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty’s potential moves in the UK remained the topic of speculation – a joint venture with Vodafone has been long mooted, and has already happened in The Netherlands, but this week Liberty got closer to incumbent UK telco BT, while the Dutch experience may sound some warning bells for similar deals elsewhere. Liberty’s UK cableco, Virgin Media, renewed its MVNO deal with BT (previously…