It only took the best part of 18 months and one of the most disruptive horizontal mergers in history, but trade association Cable Europe has finally become GigaEurope – in a bid to revitalize an industry which increasingly looks like a deer in the headlights. News of the rebrand was delivered through gritted teeth on stage at Cable Congress this week, which does not exactly evoke confidence for the new-look cable policy string-puller. Cable Congress, otherwise known as the Liberty Global back-patting party, therefore took on a different persona this year – dominated heavily by Vodafone and mobile conversations since the telco acquired Liberty’s cable assets in Germany to become the country’s largest owner of gigabit-capable network infrastructure in Germany—controlling…