News
Deal will enable market leader to use smaller rival’s spectrum for LTE services, according to local press reports.
MTN’s Nigerian unit has acquired smaller rival Visafone after lengthy negotiations, it emerged this week.
Nigerian newspaper This Day on Thursday reported that the telcos have concluded a takeover deal, but its source was unable to share the value of the transaction. Meanwhile, Leadership noted that the deal received the approval of the Nigerian Communications Commission late last month.
As yet there has been no official comment from either party involved in the deal, or from the regulator.
In April last year Reuters claimed that MTN was holding talks with Visafone and that a deal could be imminent, but nothing came of the report, apparently until now.
MTN is Nigeria’s largest mobile operator with a subscriber base of 62.5 million and market share of 41.5% as of the end of September, according to figures from the NCC. At the same date, Nigeria’s total mobile subscriber base stood at 150.5 million, including GSM and CDMA users, but excluding fixed wireless.
CDMA operator Visafone is a minnow by comparison with just 2.03 million customers, but it does have something that could prove useful to MTN: spectrum.
As Leadership points out, Visafone has spectrum in the 800 MHz band, which MTN could use for LTE services.
As it stands, most of Nigeria’s growing number of mobile Internet users are restricted to 2G and 3G services.
